We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
AuthorKaren Joy Fowler
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublishedPlume
Media typePrint (hardcover)
AwardsPEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2014)

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a 2013 novel by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler. The novel won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction[1] and was also short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.[2]

Plot

Rosemary, while attending U.C. Davis in her early twenties, reflects on her early life in Indiana. She lived with her sister Fern, brother Lowell, mother, and father who is professor of behavioral psychology at Indiana University Bloomington. When Fern disappears one day, Lowell runs away from home in search of her. Rosemary also learns that her university has a secret that ties to her past, and as she learns more, she discovers a newfound connection with her family.

Reception

The novel has received mostly positive reviews. Writing for The New York Times, Barbara Kingsolver says the "novel [is] so readably juicy and surreptitiously smart [that] it deserves all the attention it can get."[3] Ron Charles, writing for The Washington Post, remarks that "Fowler manages to subsume any polemical motive within an unsettling, emotionally complex story."[4] Maureen Corrigan, writing for NPR, says the novel is "witty but emotionally and intellectually riskier [than Fowler's previous novels]."[5] In The Guardian, Liz Jenner wrote "Many a novel has devoted itself to exploring variations of Larkin's lament about what mums and dads do to their kids. But if any other book has done it as exhilaratingly as the achingly funny, deeply serious heart-breaker that is Fowler's 10th novel, and made it ring true for the whole of mankind, I've yet to read it. This is a moral comedy to shout about from the treetops."[6]

Awards

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was shortlisted for the 2014 Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in the same year.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Flood, Alison (3 April 2014). "Karen Joy Fowler wins PEN/Faulkner award for fiction". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  2. ↑ Seymenliyska, Elena (14 October 2014). "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, review: 'deeply moving'". The Daily Telegraph.
  3. ↑ Kingsolver, Barbara (2013-06-06). "The Other Sister: Karen Joy Fowler's 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  4. ↑ Charles, Ron (2013-05-28). "Karen Joy Fowler's 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  5. ↑ Corrigan, Maureen (2013-06-07). "'Beside Ourselves' Explores Human-Animal Connections". NPR. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  6. ↑ "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves review – 'A provocative take on family love'". TheGuardian.com. 20 March 2014.
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