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Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking; as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective WeAreAllCompletelyBesideOurselvescover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind.

Now her adored older brother is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism. And her once lively mother is a shell of her former self, her clever and imperious father now a distant, brooding man.

And Fern, Rosemary’s beloved sister, her accomplice in all their childhood mischief? Fern’s is a fate the family, in all their innocence, could never have imagined.

~ Goodreads

My review............3.5 stars

This was a nominee for the Man Booker prize in 2014. I went into this book already knowing what the plot twist was (it was kind of hard to avoid if you read any of the press surrounding it), but this did not hinder my enjoyment of the novel. Great story about the devastating effects on a family when one of the members is gone, and has left under adverse circumstances. It does skip fairly often from the present to the past but I didn't find it hard to follow and it was a necessary part of the plot. My only issue that I had with it was that while I didn't dislike any of the characters, I wasn't really invested in them either. I think if I had related more to them (particularly the main character Rosemary) I would have given it a 4 star. I enjoyed the plot, particularly that it explored something different. The writing was well done, maybe a bit extraneous at times, but overall it hit the mark with the family dynamics and animal activism.

This one is worth a look, I can understand why it was an award nominee. Good story about the effects on a family after a change in the family structure.

6 thoughts on “Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

  1. R_Hunt @ View From My Home

    I already know the plot twist after innocently reading a review (not from my close blogger friends) and finding out what should've stayed unsaid. Shame on spoiler bloggers who don't put up a spoiler alert lol 🙂

    I think this would be just okay for me, and be worth my while because it is a different type of story, so if I see it in the library, but I wouldn't buy it. Thanks!

    Reply
    1. ondbookshelf

      Agree, it's a good library read. I got my copy from BookOutlet, so didn't invest too much into it. It's worth a read, my sister gave it 5 stars (different strokes for different folks).

      Reply
  2. Michelle

    Well, I guess the one good thing about not paying attention to any book prizes is that I have never heard of this one and therefore do not have a clue what the plot twist is. LOL!

    It's too bad you couldn't enjoy it more. I think characters to whom you can relate or with whom you can feel empathy is much more important than liking a character. This has made many a novel go from good to great or vice versa.

    Reply

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