前言：此文由兩位書友分別寫就，合二為一。
同讀同寫的樂趣，是為記！
Two friends read a book in separate time and space, united by a review and joy!
 
歸舟
There is no way to get around a book without munching its title. Afterall, isn’t the title hitting us foremost? It is very much so for this book: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. On the surface, “beside oneself” indicates someone is so emotional that he/she is almost out of control. Possibly swinging both directions, such person can be insanely happy or crazily angry. Good or bad, judge for yourself after 322 pages. During the whirl wind of global craziness, a title like this certainly packs a load of mystery and sarcasm.
BusyBee
It's a really good point. I didn’t give the title much thought at all. How appropriate for this crazy world we are in right now.
歸舟
This is how it got started -- A dear friend of mine prescribed me this book, but refused to drop any hint on what this book was about. “The less you know the better.” In the end, she was so right. Now my advice: Stop reading this article. It’s stupid to discourage our readers, but please allow me to be stupid for once. A book talk, matter of fact, is meant for those who have read the book. This article has spoiler.
BusyBee
I'd like to underline "dear friend”and“she was so right", wink wink. In all seriousness though, do read the book. You will be amply rewarded.
歸舟
This is a book about a child, no, three children – Rosemary, Fern and Lowell. The years when the three were together was the happiest time ever. One third through the book, when the title sentence revealed, the three were rolling snow balls, making snow angels, sledding on a slope. Sharing a bowl of peanuts, one for you, one for me. Mother swore to love them the same. At age five, the tides turned. Rosemary got sent away to grand parents’ home. She returned home eventually, only to discover Fern was gone. Mother locked herself in bedroom. Lowell was often away for days without telling anyone. The professor father devoted to drinking. Nobody was talking. On top of this, they moved to a smaller house. With Fern gone, love was gone. Fern=love. The two children never really healed. At age 11, Rosemary lost one more sibling – Lowell ran away from home, to look for Fern.
BusyBee
The happy childhood years was such a delight to read, whimsical, charming, with an almost fairytale quality, which makes the loss all the more heartbreaking. With three children, the description of the family dynamics is very telling and provides psychological underpinnings for what comes next.
The story could go like this: Once upon a time, in a large manor house in the woods lived two little sisters. Although born to different mothers, they had lived together like twins since birth. Older Sister was strong but reticent, nimble of limbs and pure of heart. Younger Sister was weaker, less agile, but quicker with words. As the years went by, Younger Sister became jealous of Older Sister. One day, ….
Ok, if this were a classic fairytale, what do you think would happen next? Would some fairy godmother come along and teach the girls (and readers) a really good lesson? Which one of the two sisters would likely live happily ever after?
 
歸舟
I was in this trap at one point, guilty but not to be blamed -- the story appeared to be a fairytale on surface.
The book did not unfold in chronical order. It jumped around, from the middle of the story to the beginning of the middle, to the end of the middle, to the end of the beginning, to the beginning of the end, to the beginning, and to the end.
BusyBee
I wonder if this loop-the-loop narrative structure also serves to underscore Rosemary's sense of loss and confusion and whether there is any significance to the different locales. Certainly, the Californian fog seems to echo Rosemary’s own uncertainty and indecision.
This scenario is essentially the premise of Karen Joy Fowler's deeply touching book “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves”. Of course, Fowler was not writing a fairytale or children’s book, she was interested in weaving a profound and utterly convincing tale for grown-ups, but with a set-up just shy of fantasy. Rosemary Cooke, the book's narrator and protagonist, insists that the only way to tell her story is to start in the middle. Rosemary does indeed have very good reasons to do so, and it happens to be a clever ploy to keep readers in the dark for >70 pages. If you read this book without knowing that Rosemary’s sister Fern's identity, you will likely experience its maximum impact as intended by Fowler, but the book is so well written and engrossing, you will be moved by it regardless.
When we first meet Rosemary, she is a 22-year-old 5th-year college student, estranged from her psychologist father, with her long-suffering mother as the go-between, and 10 and 17 years since last seeing her beloved brother Lowell and sister Fern, both of whom have become taboo subjects for the family. As Rosemary tells it, her family is now defined by absence and reticence.
歸舟
So true, the readers will experience or experienced confusion exactly as the protagonist, as lost as a rat in a maze. In the maze, the three time capsules became clear over time: her childhood in Indiana, college years in California, teaching years in South Dakota. Each carried pungent smells of comedy, tragedy, bitterness, humor, wit. If you were not shocked by the reveal of Fern’s identity, you are somebody. The author did her tricks, by making readers believe the three children were the same. Everyone fell.
The trap – Fern was not human, a chimpanzee instead. Adopted by a surrogate family, Fern lived with them, loving all and loved by all, as a family member. Fern was a condensed image of many experiment chimps in decades - Gua from Kellogg family, Lucy Temerlin, Nim Chimpsky, Washoe, and so on. The primate studies did not end well for many reasons.
 
BusyBee
In hindsight, how could any experiment like those have ended well?
The little chimp Fern, “twinned” with baby Rosemary since birth as part of a scientific study of the behavior of chimps that have fully integrated into the human world, is at the center of the book. Nowadays such studies are unlikely to ever receive approval for both ethical and scientific reasons, not to mention the issue of liability. And yet, they could have happened. After all, baby primates have been raised by human families before, although never quite as described in this book. The Cooke family resembles no other, with Fern raised as a daughter and both girls subjects of scientific scrutiny carried out by a constant stream of graduate students busily tutoring, observing, documenting, and filming the two little sisters. As a reader, you know such an endeavor will not last long. The only question is how badly it will end.
歸舟
Nevertheless, I have to argue this book is about animal rights. To some extent, yes, but the scale was weighted down by other topics. Love, family, parental images, psychological well being, coming of age... In any extreme situation, love and family are inevitably going through trial. Who can walk out turbulence without toppling or tottering? Divided, they each got knocked down hard. Can passion destroy a family? What about relationship? Rosemary’s father, the pillar of her mother, and Rosemary’s brother, the pillar of Rosemary, didn’t react like protective figures in the family. They both were carried away, left the supposedly weaker ones standing and enduring.
BusyBee
I think the book at its core is about family. By making Fern a little chimp, it adds a new twist to the tale of a family in crisis, and forces the reader to redefine family and love. It’s brilliant and thought-provoking.
Rosemary was inseparable from Fern for the first five years of her life, but she was so young then and has since spent far more years apart from Fern, surely Fern’s influence must have dissipated by now, however extraordinary those years might have been. Yet Rosemary is unmistakably not your typical young adult. She has “space” issues, difficulties in making friends, as well as quirkiness and impulses that are decidedly more simian than human. For example, once Fern’s identity comes to light, it is clear that Rosemary becomes so fascinated with the outgoing and outrageous drama student Harlow she met by accident because Harlow reminds her so much of Fern – impulsive, unpredictable, wild.
歸舟
Good point! It becomes clear why they each fascinated the other. Harlow played as a linkage between Rosemary’s past and the present. The time around their meeting was quite beautiful almost cinematic. For instance, in the morning, pedaling to class, off the field, Rosemary was wrapped in fogs, as if riding in a cloud, with a large flock of Canada geese overhead honking like jazz. During lunch time Harlow fought with her boyfriend and smashed nearly every piece breakable, threw everything that could be thrown. In cafeteria, Rosemary mirrored Harlow’s violence without thinking, competing for the cop’s attention. A funny scene. Later in the jail, Rosemary noticed bars went all the way to the ceiling. A light gave loud buzz, another blinking, as if a scene dimmed and brightened as if whole days were rapidly passing on a stage. Quite ceremonial before and after the meeting, don’t you think?
BusyBee
Given the weighty themes, the book could have been a downer. But the eclectic characters (from the irresistible Harlow to her hapless ex-boyfriend) and Rosemary’s wry comments totally save the day – the book is surprisingly fun to read.
歸舟
Talking about the fun part, the luggage is an interesting piece. It travelled through the book misplaced mishandled multiple times. However minor role it played, a metaphor nevertheless. The luggage carried their diaries. A diary is about memory. Memory can be lost or change direction during its course. In the end, the luggage returned so did Rosemary and her family.
BusyBee
A theme, however weighty, is about love and loss. Rosemary seldom thinks about Fern in college. So she claims. Sometimes she even questions the accuracy of her own memories, her time with Fern, and what led to Fern’s removal 17 years ago. She wants to tell her story from the middle, because she is stuck in the middle, not willing, not wanting, not daring to look back. To move forward, however, Rosemary needs to confront her past, finding answers to questions she has avoided asking, and to look in the mirror and accept what she sees.
However beloved Fern is to the Cookes, she is decidedly not human. Is Fern really a pet then? We can and do love our pets dearly, just like family members, right? And yet would the loss of a dog or cat shatter a family to its core and send its members into years of misery and depression? Should Fern have enjoyed the rights and privileges as her human relatives, given the circumstances under which she was assimilated into the human world? It may be difficult to find another species in the animal kingdom that can and does treat its own kind as cruelly as man sometimes treats man.
Unbeknownst to Fern and her adoptive family, her fate has never been in her own hands, or the hands of her adoptive parents. Fowler thus puts a provocative spin on familial and familiar themes, inserting existential questions about what it means to be human and humane into a tale of loyalty, betrayal, and redemption.
 
歸舟
What's my melting moment? When Rosemary saw off Lowell at the train station, singing “When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash...”. Rosemary finally met her long missing brother after 12 years. In less than half day, they were separating once again, for good this time. She didn’t realize how much Lowell deeply cared about her. The gap between the two siblings closed, but the separation was settled. One happy reconciliation, one broken reunion.
BusyBee
As much as I feel sad and devastated for Fern and Rosemary, my heart aches for Lowell, who paid so dearly for his loyalty and compassion. Who doesn't wish and yearn for a brother like that?
歸舟
Same here! Lowell was not granted with enough pages or paragraphs in my opinion. His suffering and struggle left unspoken, his action undefended, his life not rewarded. A great tragedy.
Regardless, overall it was a joy to peel back layers of layers in the story, a bonus to listen to the audio book -- the narrator has done fine justice to the amusing wits. It's a stretch to cover so many in 322 pages, impossible to tell which was the leading theme.
BusyBee
Humans can be so cruel to even our own kind, our closest evolutionary cousins better not depend on the empathy of man. Planet of the apes maybe?
This book is not overly long, but it manages to touch upon many themes, psychology, animal rights, politics, memory, to name a few. It is tinged with a sense of resignation and sadness, for what we humanly can and cannot do perhaps. Please do not be scared away by such descriptions of weighty matters though, for the book is highly readable. You will find no preachy commentary, but witty and quirky observations from Rosemary. It is full of tenderness and compassion, and characters that are flawed but engaging. Best of all, it rewards the patient reader with an emotionally satisfying resolution.
Perhaps Fern is the mirror that Rosemary has feared looking into. Once she does, she will find her true self in Fern’s eyes. In this tale, there is no fairy godmother, no happily ever after, just the usual headaches and heartaches of growing up. Just like in the real world.
 
Book Author Karen Joy Fowler
BusyBee 05/24/2020 & Guizhou 06/07/2020
Edited 06/14/2020 U.S.A.
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