I've stuck here to the part I can tell, the part that's mine, and still everything I've said is all about them, a chalk outline around the space where they should have been. “My brother and sister have led extraordinary lives, but I wasn't there, and I can't tell you that part. As the reader, you are transfixed by an unreliable narrator and forced to learn the story as she did, in pieces and over a long period of time. This is a unique coming of age story in circumstances that very few have experienced. Rosemary is just five when the book begins, which is also the year that Fern (her Chimp sister) is sent away. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves explores themes of ethics surrounding animal research by producing a fictional account of being raised alongside a Chimpanzee. The way that Fowler presents emotional scars from a corrupt family life will leave you thinking about this book for months after you close the last page. Growing up with a psychologist for a father and a mother that hardly speaks proves invalidating for young Rosemary as she tries to navigate her way through life. The ethical implications of scientific research are continually called into question through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, making the reader feel the same naivety and confusion as 5-year-old Rosemary does when her family is torn apart. It is a psychological and unique novel, which the Guardian calls ‘a provocative take on family love.’

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler begins in 1979, but is arguably just as prevalent in today’s society. “We are so excited that, in the strangely illuminating phrase my mother favours, we’re completely beside ourselves.”

We are all completely beside