Positively Yes!

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wow.  I'm completely beside myself.   This book hooked me and delivered.   It made me laugh, cry, and think.  It taught me something new and changed my mind about some issues.  It reminded me.  It gave me hope. 

Fern and Rosemary are two sisters who are separated.  As sister separations tend to do, this act unhinged the family, but there is hope for a brighter tomorrow.   Here is the publisher's summary on Goodreads:

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and our narrator, Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I spent the first eighteen years of my life defined by this one fact: that I was raised with a chimpanzee,” she tells us. “It’s never going to be the first thing I share with someone. I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion, I’d scarcely known a moment alone. She was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half, and I loved her as a sister.”

Rosemary was not yet six when Fern was removed. Over the years, she’s managed to block a lot of memories. She’s smart, vulnerable, innocent, and culpable. With some guile, she guides us through the darkness, penetrating secrets and unearthing memories, leading us deeper into the mystery she has dangled before us from the start. Stripping off the protective masks that have hidden truths too painful to acknowledge, in the end, “Rosemary” truly is for remembrance.


Put this one on your reading list, I've got to talk to you about it!


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