We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler is the best kind of Summer read: leaving you crisp and energized (maybe even plotting an action for the protection of animals) rather than wilted, soggy, and dull. Cucumber salad beats cotton candy every day in July. This family story is told from the inside, by a narrator who is still trying to figure it all out for herself, informed by Franz Kafka and Thomas Moore. Just the way we remember seminal events in our own lives, Rosemary starts in the middle and then works backwards and forwards. How flawed are her memories? Hard to say. Like our own, the memories that supplant the original events may be just as telling. Rosemary's father is an experimental psychologist, and the whole family, from the time she is born until she is five, participate in a 24-hour-a-day experiment, which is to say, they live it. The exact nature of the experiment sounds harmless and sweet: an animal baby is raised as part of Rosemary's family. But just as in all-human families, love, jealousies, inattention, and violence leave their mark. These five years shape and scar each member of the family, and direct the course of their lives. If you are fascinated by psychology, moved by animal rights, have a particular penchant for chimpanzees, or are just looking for something to read that is completely fresh and moving, this will be both a refreshing and disturbing summer read.
