I just devoured this book in four nights. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as emotionally invested in a book; my heart ached throughout the day, ruminating on passages I’d read the night before.
“We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves” by Karen Joy Fowler is ostensibly about Rosemary Cooke, a lonely, aimless college student at UC Davis in the late ’90s. She is finishing up her Fall semester, but she is subsumed in memories (real and fake) of events that rocked her family when she was 5. Revelations crop up and explode, all mixed with the frustration we all share of our imperfect, fleeting, and self-absorbed childhood memories.
You are probably thinking divorce? Infidelity? Abuse? No, none of these and there is practically no way you’ll foresee what this book is really about, until about a quarter of the way through. Fowler’s writing is witty and charming, which is a welcome respite to the deep sadness that otherwise pervades the book.
Rosemary’s story is meaningful and big; I highly recommend it.
