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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler

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What Members Thought

Aug 01, 2017 Jessica rated it really liked it

Shelves: award-winners, literaryfiction

Subtitle: And you thought YOUR family was weird!

I really don't want to say anything about this, because I think any clues whatsoever would completely ruin the strange/delightful/harrowing surprises of this book. The book is both comical and dark at the same time, and is, at its heart, about the nature of family as well as the nature of human beings. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jun 21, 2013 Misha rated it it was amazing

Shelves: doorway-people, doorway-prose, doorway-plot, reread, read-2013, read-2016, doorway-place, female-protagonist

Rosemary Cooke was 5 when a seismic event shook her family. In the 1970s, the Cookes were one of many families that signed up to raise chimpanzees as if they were children. Fern, a chimp, and Rosemary were raised as sisters for 5 years. So why was Fern eventually taken away and where did she really go? Years later, in college, Rosemary begins to try to piece together the truth. Rosemary revisits, via her faulty memory, the family that fractured in ways subtle and overt in the wake of Fern's myst ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2023 Grace rated it liked it

This book is difficult to review without massive spoilers, so spoiler tags it is. Fortunately, I went into this book totally blind. The "twist" is a big selling point, so seems hard to avoid, but at the same time, if you already have the twist, you're not going to enjoy the book as much.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Feb 26, 2018 Maria Elmvang rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-ebook, not-owned, fiction, 2018

Unfortunately I was really disappointed by this book. I didn't care for the writing style, the twist seemed pointless and the plot almost non-existing. I thought it was going to go somewhere interesting, but then it just fizzled into an anti-climatic non-ending.

I had had high hopes, as everybody seems to rave about this book, but unfortunately it could only just make it to "okay" for me, and I'll probably end up passing my copy along to someone else. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jun 09, 2013 Jenny Fosket rated it really liked it

I liked this book but not as much as I expected to. The premise is fascinating-- a family adopts a chimpanzee to be raised alongside their human daughter, as siblings, in an academic experiment. After five years, they give Fern (the Chimpanzee daughter) away and the book deals with the aftermath of that loss on the rest of the family. It's told from the perspective of Rose, the twinned daughter, and I loved the depiction of Rose and Fern's childhood relationship, its heartaches, jealousy, confus ...more

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Sep 17, 2014 Kate rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, audiobook, 2014

I particularly enjoyed the actual research presented, though it was vexing to then not be sure what was true (e.g., about UC Davis). at first this seemed like a flighty college book a la Monsters of Templeton, but it is actually much better, with more emotion and much more to deliberate, especially in re: ethics of animal research. And I laughed out loud a few times. Audiobook narrator was perfect.

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