We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

So the first major thing to say is that both the blurb on the back of the book and the cover illustration of this edition spoiled the major plot twist, so I spent the first 70 pages wondering how I was supposed to react, and how I would have reacted had I not known that Fern was a chimp, not a girl. Once that was over, though, I found the book to be a solid family drama with relatable main characters. It's hard to more thoroughly review without massive spoilers, and I tend to think that spoiler-y reviews are not helpful, so suffice to say that I found Rosemary, Harlow and Lowell particularly to be fascinating, unique characters and I found Rosemary's journey from loquacious youngest sibling to recalcitrant only child to be interesting.

Two major downsides: one is that the animal rights stuff got a little heavy-handed to the point of detracting from the main plot. (A major side plot seemed to be: “You, too, can join the ALF. Here is how. Don't feel bad, they're not really terrorists – they don't hurt people, they just set back life-saving research by years, but that doesn't really count.”) The other downside is that the last 20% of the book feels really weak. It mostly is just tying up loose ends and has completely lost the momentum of the first portion.

Overall, I found this book compulsive reading. I had to know what happened to Fern and Lowell, and then what Rosemary was going to do. The characters were done beautifully and Fowler succeeded at something that so much contemporary literature fails at: an actually unique story.