Items related to We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Shortlisted...

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize - Hardcover

 
9781846689659: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 

Rosemary's young, just at college, and she's decided not to tell anyone a thing about her family. So we're not going to tell you too much either: you'll have to find out for yourselves what it is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other.

Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone - vanished from her life. There's something unique about Rosemary's sister, Fern. So now she's telling her story; a looping narrative that begins towards the end, and then goes back to the beginning. Twice.

It's funny, clever, intimate, honest, analytical and swirling with ideas that will come back to bite you. We hope you enjoy it, and if, when you're telling a friend about it, you do decide to spill the beans about Fern, don't feel bad. It's pretty hard to resist.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
'A novel so readably juicy and surreptitiously smart, it deserves all the attention it can get' - Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times Book Review

'A dark cautionary tale hanging out, incognito-style, in what at first seems a traditional family narrative. It is anything but' - Alice Sebold

'No contemporary writer creates characters more appealing, or examines them with greater acuity and forgiveness, than she does' - Michael Chabon

'Fowler has given us the gift of a splendid novel. Not only is the story fascinating, moving, and beautifully written, but also it ripples with humour; its quirky characters include a puppet named Madame Defarge and a Seinfeldian assortment of apartment dwellers. Layered with a huge moral compass and enormous humanity, this portrait of a family one-fifth simian will, nevertheless, touch and delight every human' - Boston Globe

'Hinges upon Rosemary's sharp voice, which at its best includes funny, self-aware asides such as an early reference to a character at a holiday dinner where she flippantly advises the reader, "Don't get attached to him; he's not really part of this story' - LA Times

'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is that rare thing, a comic novel that wrestles seriously with serious moral questions ... Fowler knows how to make her story funny and sad and disturbing and revelatory by erecting a space in which her reader is allowed to feel all of that for herself' - Salon

'So thought provoking on the topic of animal rights that it could alter your future decisions as a consumer. I don't want to say much about the plot of the book ... except to compare it to Ann Patchett's State of Wonder in terms of weaving a larger story of radical, scientific experimentation into a very personal woman's narrative' - MSN

'Rosemary's voice is achingly memorable, and Fowler's intelligent discourse on science vs. compassion reshapes the traditional family novel into something more universally relevant... This brave, bold, shattering novel reminds us what it means to be human, in the best and worst sense' --Miami Herald

'Halfway through Karen Joy Fowler's enthralling novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," I was sort of beside myself, too, with that electric thrill of discovering a great book. I wanted to stay up all night to finish it, but I also wanted to stop and call all my book-loving friends immediately and blurt, "You have to read this book! '" - Cleveland Plain Dealer

'[A]n unsettling, emotionally complex story that plumbs the mystery of our strange relationship with the animal kingdom - relatives included' - Ron Charles, Washington Post

'Karen Joy Fowler has written the book she's always had in her to write. With all the quiet strangeness of her amazing Sarah Canary, and all the breezy wit and skill of her beloved Jane Austen Book Club, and a new, urgent gravity, she has told the story of an American family. An unusual family-but aren't all families unusual? A very American, an only-in-America family-and yet an everywhere family, whose children, parents, siblings, love one another very much, and damage one another badly. Does the love survive the damage? Will human beings survive the damage they do to the world they love so much? This is a strong, deep, sweet novel' - Ursula K Le Guin

'It's been years since I've felt so passionate about a book. When I finished at 3 a.m., I wept, then I woke up the next morning, reread the ending, and cried all over again' - Ruth Ozeki

'Are we animals, or are we something else? This is the urgent question ever roiling beneath the surface in Karen Fowler's alarming tale of a family's rude awakening to the true meaning of the word "primal." Reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is both a delight and a provocation. I turned the last page nearly breathless with admiration' - Valerie Martin

'One of the greatest pleasures I take in reading is being able to hand over the books that thrill me, which this summer would be Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' - Ann Patchett, Wall Street Journal

'A gripping and surreptitiously intelligent book about a family's falling apart after a young daughter is sent away. Who - or what - the young daughter is can't be discussed without revealing a major spoiler, suffice it to say it is a whopper. The book is far deeper and more ambitious, however, than its central conceit would lead one to think' --Khaled Hosseini, from the Khaled Hosseini Foundation newsletter

'Intelligent and forces the reader to question what we owe our fellow creatures - Elizabeth George

'This surreptitiously smart novel's big reveal slyly recalls a tabloid headline' - New York Times Notable Books 2013

'Spectacular, deep, zingy ... Simultaneously a high-speed antic and an absolutely essential meditation on nothing less than what it means to be a good person ... I gasped aloud and put this book down more than once, filled with ache and worry for the characters; I laughed aloud several times; and when it was done, the big questions it raised about kindness, empathy, and cruelty lingered with me and show no signs of fading.
It's one thing to write a deep book. It's another altogether to write a deep book that clips along like a pop song, one that periodically skewers you on events and questions that pin you to the world and demand that you confront things that we've all carefully avoided for most of our lives' --Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Book Description:

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014.
By the author of worldwide bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club: you can't choose your family, but they can make choices for you. Big, life-defining choices.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherSerpent's Tail
  • Publication date2014
  • ISBN 10 1846689651
  • ISBN 13 9781846689659
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages336
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780142180822: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A Novel

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780142180822
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2014
Softcover

  • 9781846689666: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

    Serpen..., 2014
    Softcover

  • 9780399162091: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

    Marian..., 2013
    Hardcover

  • 9781781252956: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

    Serpen..., 2014
    Softcover

  • 9781788167109: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

    Serpen..., 2021
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Karen Joy Fowler
Published by Serpent's Tail, London (2014)
ISBN 10: 1846689651 ISBN 13: 9781846689659
New Hardcover First Edition Signed Quantity: 1
Seller:
Fiction First
(Congleton, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition. A fine unread 1st impression in a fine dustwrapper. Signed and dated (11/10/14) by the Author on the title page. Signed after The Man Booker Shortlist event at The Cheltenham Literature Festival. Shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 008488

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 28
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 5.40
Within United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Fowler,Karen Joy
Published by Serpent's Tail (2014)
ISBN 10: 1846689651 ISBN 13: 9781846689659
New Hardcover First Edition Signed Quantity: 1
Seller:
first state books
(Corsham, WILTS, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. Fine in fine wrapper. High point novel by author of The Jane Austen Book Club. 'It's been years since I've felt so passionate about a book,' says Ruth Ozeki while Valerie Martin is left 'breathless with admiration.' Booker shortlisted. Signed and dated copy. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 468

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 40
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 3.05
Within United Kingdom
Destination, rates & speeds