"We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" - Karen Joy Fowler
When I finished reading this book, I felt I had to share something, somewhere. I wasn't ready to write a review yet. I was still too rapt. So I went to Facebook, and posted:
Just finished reading Karen Joy Fowlers "We are all completely beside ourselves." Coming up for air now. It's a masterpiece. The voice is comic, sprightly, delightful. The story is dark and layered... so much so that midway, I thought it might be too much for me to deal with. I'm glad I continued.
I lucked out on the way I came to this book.
WHY KINDLE IS BETTER
At Wiscon, where Karen read from it, I'd hoped to get her to sign it for me. I didn't know anything about it then, but Karen was one of my Clarion instructors and I love her writing. But the book wasn't actually coming out until two days after Wiscon. Nor could I attend any of her Bay Area signings, where I'd undoubtedly have bought it.
I'd wait, I thought. This is San Francisco, she lives not too far from this city, and would undoubtedly be here for a reading some time. But before that happened, my author friend Kater Cheek wrote a review that made me feel I couldn't put it off any longer.
"I sometimes feel guilty," Kater wrote, "about all my average “liked it” star ratings in a world of grade inflation, and have thought about re-scaling all my books so that they all have 4 or 5 stars. But then a book comes along like this, where it really was amazing, and I’m glad that I so rarely give out 5 stars, because then people can understand that 5 stars means that this book is really something special, and not merely good."
The rest of her review was general - as this piece will be, and for the same reason. There's a surprise that hits you well into the book that makes everything you've read thus far fall into place. If you know what that surprise is (and I think many people do by now), it's still a superb book, but it loses - that.
So anyway, after reading Kater's review, the Kindle edition of the book was only a couple of clicks away.
And that's where I got lucky. The paper version of the book actually has the surprise on its dust jacket. (I still haven't bought the paper version, though I intend to do so the next time Karen can sign it.) In fact, it's even in the description on Amazon, which thankfully I did not read. So when I started in, the revelation burst upon me as the author intended, with just the right mixture of shock and comprehension and satisfaction of curiosity and revising of mental images.
And that's why this isn't really a review of the book, but more of a reaction to it.
WHAT I LOVED
I would have read the book for the voice alone. The protagonist, Rosemary, is a college student when we first encounter her. She's just been arrested for getting involved in a cafeteria incident where the girl at the next table is breaking up with her boyfriend by breaking things. Her descriptions are smart and witty, the turns of phrase utterly wonderful.
But it gets even better. It's not just the voice, it's about reality. And perhaps the motto of this book should be 'Nothing is as it seems.' There's a deeper meaning to everything, and even that keeps changing. The plot twists like a snake in a maze.
And it gets worse, especially if you take families, love, and animals seriously (and all these matter to me). Difficult political themes emerge, confronting us with the whole issue of the homo sapiens and its relation to other animals - including power, love and cruelty and confronting Rosemary with a confusing set of choices. The story inexorably darkens. As I wrote in my immediate reaction, at one point it was getting so depressing - despite the witty tone - I thought I might stop reading. But I didn't.
And it gets better again, pulling all the disparate strands into a bitter-sweet ending that was a lot more satisfying than the fashionable grimdark things where life slides into an inevitable decline and a book's beginning is the best part of it.
The technical virtuosity is breathtaking, leaving me-the-writer undecided whether I should tip my hat and bow profoundly, or dig a deep hole and pull the turf over me in despair. Also - she makes it looks easy.
It's brilliant.