Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
- At April 10, 2014
- By Bob Howe
- In Reviews
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
First of all, ignore the blurb: while literally true, it fundamentally misrepresents what the book is really about.
If you belong to a writer’s organization, you’re exposed to a lot of debate about the value of awards. On literary merit, the spectrum of opinion runs from “popularity contests” to “deeply flawed processes” to “they got this one right.” Whether awards help sell books is likewise a contentious topic.
When We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves won the PEN/Faulkner award, the book wasn’t on my radar. If not for the burst of publicity in the wake of the award, I would likely have never read the book. And what a shame that would have been.
Fowler’s book is about loss, grief, and the plasticity of memory. It’s deeply felt and brilliantly executed. If you care at all what drives some people to be writers (spoiler: not the money nor adulation), then you should read this book.