2014 Booker Prize longlist: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

This thread is for discussion of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

  

I finished it last night and I liked it enormously. It doesn't have the gravitas of a Wolf Hall, but it certainly is a worthy entrant.

And the voice of the narrator is wonderful.

I read this a few months ago and liked it quite a bit. I'm glad I didn't know anything about the "twist" before I read it, because I don't think I would have, if I had. It sounds hokey but is actually really well done.

I had to reread the twist several times, because I couldn't believe it at first and had completely different ideas in my head (much worse ideas).

> 3 I completely agree with you, I doubt I would have read it had I known the subject, so I am glad I did not know about the 'twist' because I really enjoyed this book: the story, Rosemary and the writing style. I doubt it will win the Booker Prize, but compared to To Rise Again at a Decent Hour - the only other one I read so far - this is the winner for me.

I'm afraid I'm going to be in the minority in my opinion of We Are Completely Beside Ourselves. I didn't like it at all, as I found the narrator to be an incredibly annoying and unsympathetic person, and I couldn't identify with any of the characters. This book felt disturbingly similar to the current crop of American novels I've read that feature unlikable and very weird middle class characters who engage in perpetual navel gazing and blame their parents, siblings, teachers and lovers for their own failures and f*cked up lives. I'll give it 2 stars, and I earnestly hope that most of the remaining books on the longlist are far better than this one.

Interesting. Do you dislike all novels with unlikable characters, or was this one a special case?

(Personally, I have no problem reading books in which every character is unlikeable, but I know plenty of people who feel differently.)

I just finished the book, and am on the side of loving it. I didn't know the twist (I actually didn't even know there was going to be a twist until I noticed one of the blurbs on the front cover - I was reading this for bookgroup, I quite possibly wouldn't have been picking it up at all without a push), and knew very little about it going in.

It's been a while since I read literature (been on a sci-fi/fantasy kick for a while now), and this was a good fascinating story to get back into literature with. And plenty of plot, I like that in a book. I also loved the psychology notes she kept dropping, but I did study Psych back at Uni (back in the day!).

I didn't find the main character unlikeable, but I do know what @kidzdoc means about the endless navel gazing and "this is all my parents' fault" in books, that usually peeves me right off. But, as I said, I did like Rosemary (I think I share some of her awkwardness, and starting school mid-term brought back a whole heap of awful memories for me, who had a similar - but far less extreme - experience).

My main complaint is that I had to rush it to finish it for bookgroup tonight. I needed just one extra day to savour it all, instead of whisking through the last few chapters. But that's probably a fairly specific problem just for me. :)

>9 wookiebender: Ha, it can still be counted as SFF, because it was nominated for a Nebula for best novel too ;)

>10 divinenanny: Good to know! :)