{"id":34049,"date":"2014-07-30T09:19:04","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T13:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=34049"},"modified":"2019-04-10T09:27:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T13:27:00","slug":"we-are-all-completely-besides-ourselves-by-karen-joy-fowler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/we-are-all-completely-besides-ourselves-by-karen-joy-fowler\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"We<\/a>“Once upon a time, there was a family with two daughters, and a mother and father who promised to love them both exactly the same.”<\/p>\n

“She was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. It’s important to note that I was also all those thing to her.”<\/p>\n

“What I found in books was daughters indulged and daughters oppressed, daughters who spoke loudly and daughters made silent. I found daughters imprisoned in towers, beaten and treated as servants, beloved daughters sent off to keep house for hideous monsters.”<\/p>\n

“… there was a happy family\u00a0\u2013 a mother, a father, a son, and two daughters.”<\/p>\n

“Three children. One story. The only reason I’m the one telling it is because I’m the one not currently in a cage.”<\/p>\n

Although these quotes are pulled directly, exactly from Karen Joy Fowler\u2019s latest novel, I confess that I’ve chosen them rather out\u00a0of context, on purpose; without leading you too astray, I’m complicit in being as unreliable a voice as Rosemary Cooke\u00a0might be. You’ll thank me, really: Don’t go looking for further spoilers!<\/p>\n

In Part\u00a0One, Chapter One, Rosemary follows her father’s “Prologue” advice and begins in “the middle of [her] story” in 1996 when her\u00a0family has “dwindled” to just her parents and herself. Her brother Lowell disappeared 10 years ago, her sister Fern 17 years prior. Moving back and forth in time, Rosie leads\u00a0us through her life’s most\u00a0pivotal moments of loss: at 5\u00a0when her twinship suddenly imploded, at not-quite-12\u00a0when Lowell ran away, at 22 when Lowell re-emerges with news of Fern, culminating in a family\u00a0memoir Rosie will write two decades later \u2013 the very story we are privileged to read. Lest you think this is just another dysfunctional family epic,\u00a0it’s NOT. But the less you know, the better your read. Trust me. At least about\u00a0that …<\/p>\n

Even after\u00a0We Are All<\/em> won the 2014 PEN\/Faulkner Award for Fiction<\/a>,\u00a0I contrarily left it on the shelves. That changed\u00a0when the Man Booker Prize longlist<\/a> emerged last week \u2013 for the first time, Americans are eligible to win the coveted award<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0with\u00a0four<\/em>\u00a0Yanks among this year’s\u00a0baker’s dozen<\/a>. No more avoidance excuses … Fowler is more than worthy of taking on her\u00a0British cousins, in vocabulary (refulgent, ithyphallic!), language (learned, censored, lost, reclaimed), plot (unreliable narrators, soap operas, high drama, holy\u00a0quest), meaning (betrayal, sins, abuse of power, environmental destruction), and always the unexpected (hangman, escaped rats, puppet theater, wannabe CIA recruits)!<\/p>\n

Yes, the Booker made me start\u00a0it. Orlagh Cassidy’s crisp narration kept me going. And\u00a0Fowler shocked, entertained, educated, challenged, inspired me every track of the way.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Once upon a time, there was a family with two daughters, and a mother and father who promised to love them both exactly the same.” “She was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. 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