We are all completely beside ourselves

[a novel]

No cover

We are all completely beside ourselves (AudiobookFormat, 2013, Blackstone Audio, Inc.)

[sound recording] :, 540 pages

English language

Published Jan. 13, 2013 by Blackstone Audio, Inc..

ISBN:
9781470881436
OCLC Number:
826638028

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (1 review)

Narrator, Rosemary Cook, begins her story in the middle. "I spent the first eighteen years of my life defined by this one fact: 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 …

14 editions

A Grounded, Complex Look at Intersecting Worlds

5 stars

This was the first book I picked up this year. I think about it all the time, and it's one that I expect I shall revisit. There's a lot going on here: individual and familial conflict and splintering in loss; some of the potential effects of choosing an active, militant, radical, underground life; the close, easy bonds between people and the "natural" world we inhabit, and the ways that these are distorted and ruptured by contemporary social structures; and on.

I think that any radical—especially those interested in animal liberation—should pick this up, at the very least for the lens it offers. But I also think that those who aren't radical will find insights here to hold on to—and may come to understand some pieces of what move the rest of us.

Subjects

  • Human-animal relationships
  • Families
  • Self-realization in women
  • Life change events
  • Fiction