You can't choose your family, but they make choices for you.
Karen Joy Fowler is the author of three short story collections and
seven novels, including the forthcoming Booth. We Are All
Completely Beside Ourselves was shortlisted for the Man Booker
Prize 2014, won the PEN/Faulkner Prize and has sold over half a
million copies.
www.karenjoyfowler.com
Readably juicy and surreptitiously smart
*Barbara Kingsolver*
Explosive, provocative, and thoughtful
*Philippa Gregory*
A dark cautionary tale hanging out, incognito-style, in what at
first seems a traditional family narrative
*Alice Sebold*
One of the best novels I've read ever. It just destroyed me ...
she's writing at the absolute top of her game
*Romola Garai*
An original and spontaneous take on family that grabs you and
doesn't let you go.
*Elle*
Wise, provocative and wildly endearing ... achingly funny, deeply
serious heart-breaker
*Guardian*
Full of surprises, containing a real-life premise that beggars
belief, a twist to rival anything in recent memory, and an ending
that will have you in floods of tears
*Independent on Sunday*
There have been many books written about sibling love and rivalry
but few, I'm sure, can rend the heart and bore beneath the skin
quite like this one. I began lightly sobbing at about page 77 and
continued intermittently until the end when the final few pages
prompted a full-on, nose-blowing blubfest ... prepare to be charmed
and traumatised
*The Times*
Both one giant moral compass and a harrowing depiction of one
family's tragic implosion, the prose zings on the pages
*Observer*
One of the most fabulous plot twists since Magwitch was revealed as
Pip's benefactor ... perceptive, poignant
*Independent*
So readably juicy and surreptitiously smart ... this is a story of
every family in which loss engraves relationships, truth is a
soulful stalker and coming-of-age means facing down the mirror,
recognizing the shape-shifting notion of self
*New York Times Book Review*
Wise, provocative and wildly endearing ... Many a novel has devoted
itself to exploring variations of Larkin's lament about what mums
and dads do to their kid. But if any other book has done it as
exhilaratingly as the achingly funny, deeply serious heart-breaker
that is Fowler's 10th novel, and made it ring true for the whole of
mankind, I've yet to read it. This is a moral comedy to shout about
from the rooftops
*Guardian*
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 Ozecki*
The kind of book you'll want all your friends to read ... funny,
surprising and heartbreaking
*Stylist*
So thought provoking 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*
The strength of Fowler's writing is its piercing evocation of the
dynamics of family ... probing the intricacies of love and loss
with brave humour
*Financial Times*
Explosive, provocative, and thoughtful, but still very funny. I'm
so glad to have discovered the author.
*Mail on Sunday*
Holds a mirror up to reflect what we're really made of
*Daily Telegraph*
A dark cautionary tale hanging out, incognito-style, in what at
first seems a traditional family narrative. It is anything but.
This novel is deliciously jaunty in tone and disturbing in
material. Karen Joy Fowler tells the story of how one animal - the
animal of man - can simultaneously destroy and expand our notion of
what is possible
*Alice Sebold*
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*
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*
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*
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*
Fascinating, moving, and beautifully written, but also it ripples
with humor ... Layered with a huge moral compass and enormous
humanity, this portrait of a family will touch and delight every
human
*Boston Globe*
[A]n unsettling, emotionally complex story that plumbs the mystery
of our strange relationship with the animal kingdom - relatives
included
*Washington Post*
No contemporary writer creates characters more appealing, or
examines them with greater acuity and forgiveness, than she
does
*Michael Chabon*
A profound, moving and enchanting look at a very complex
family.
*Irish Times*
An astonishing achievement. Giant-stepping back and forth through
the life of its put-upon narrator, Rosemary Cooke, the youngest of
three siblings, the reader is treated to a wild ride of
tragic hilarity, but one which only ever serves to heighten its
beautiful, heartbreaking core... a genuinely stunning novel -
certainly one of the year's finest.
*Irish Examiner*
With all the pace of a thriller and the emotional pull of a
romantic novel, this masterful work is intelligently written and
will reel you in, hook, line and sinker.
*The Lady*
My favourite book this year.
*Irish Independent*
Karen Joy Fowler is a very fine novelist indeed.
*TLS*
The most impressively original book I've read this year.
*Irish Times*
Dazzling ... shattering
*Daily Telegraph*
I couldn't put it down. Explosive, provocative and thoughtful, but
still quirky and funny. It's very, very good novel
*Philippa Gregory*
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