Originally Posted by
Pompey Bum
Plastered on the front cover of Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is an assurance by Dan Chaon, author of this, that, and a book of short stories, that it "doesn't just break your heart; it takes your heart and won't give it back." It's a lie. We Are All Beside Ourselves is a riot. It has a high energy, just-this-side-of-hip narrative style, a moving but unsentimental story, and most of all, a dry, dead-on and hilariously effective sense of humor. The novel, which was short listed for the 20014 Booker Prize, may have its faults, but being a tearjerker isn't one of them.
That is not to say that We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a lark in the park. It is a "message book," and its message is disturbing enough. But Fowler is an effective enough dissembler to know to put her best jokes up front as a kind of fish bait, and to reel her readers in with fun and intimate conversational style. Now that we've laughed together, we're friends, right? Her cause, which she doesn't directly address for the first third of the book, is animal rights, and more specifically the notion that our closest evolutionary relatives ought to be treated as persons. The sucker punch comes when one of the characters--but maybe you should read it for yourself.
If We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves has a weakness, it's plot. But even that needs qualification. Fowler is a savvy writer and the novel is a tour de force. She handles the intricacies of its plot deftly enough until the reappearance of the narrator's brother, Lowell, in the second half. Fowler continues to control the plot and its out-of-sequence structure (middle-beginning-composite time) well later, too, but after Lowell's reappearance, the story begins to play second bassoon to the message, and certain characters (the nutty and slutty Harlow, for example) are left at looser ends than would have been completely effective. But Fowler's only real gaffe is a drunken college night sequence that is too long. Aside from that she knows exactly what she's doing.
I recommend We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves to those on any side of animal rights issues. It is funny enough that any objecting to emotional aspects of her appeal will not get too flustered, and there is plenty of rational argument for those of us who prefer things that way. Bring an open mind, though. Compassion is a feeling not a thought; whoever or whatever is on the receiving end.