Language does this to our memories -- simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.I should start by saying that I didn't know what the twist is in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves when I began reading, but since I knew there was a twist, I figured it out before the reveal (it's no longer on the book jacket, and I came into this about as unaware as possible, so I don't know what it would take to really surprise a reader). It is said that this is the book that Karen Joy Fowler "always had in her to write" and that seems about right: her father was a psychologist (studying animal behaviour at the University) in Bloomington, IN, and her mother was a pioneer in the co-op nursery school movement. The family (including Fowler's older brother) moved to California when she was eleven, and she eventually attended UC Davis. This is the family dynamic of the main character, Rosemary, and the two main settings of the book. Throw in looks at memory and humanity, animal rights, and some madcap hijinks with a Madame Defarge marionette, and that's the story.
The book's structure is as interesting as the plot. Rosemary narrates her story in a chatty, conversational tone and explains that she's going to start in the middle, then jumps to the end of the beginning, the beginning of the end, the actual beginning, and then the end. This feels organic since the nature of memory is a major theme -- digging up and examining buried grief, evaluating "screen memories", creating a persona by choosing what will and won't be shared with others -- and it maintained tension by not solving all the mysteries too soon. The second theme -- humanity and animal rights -- was trickier to pull off because, even though Fowler doesn't quite end up lecturing the reader, she has so much information that she needs characters to sit together and infodump all of her research to each other. Even if Rosemary (and Fowler herself) is the daughter of an animal behaviourist, I wasn't equally interested in everything she had to say: the "uncanny valley" phenomenon was cool (and germane), but solipsism, theory of mind, and episodic memory were not. The writing, however, was consistently interesting, with bits like this:
I was still breathing into the popcorn bag and my sobbing came as all manner of lovely ocean sounds, sometimes waves and sometimes seals.We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves didn't really work for me, and maybe it's because in the end, Fowler didn't take a stand. In this interview on her website, Fowler says:
A century ago the anti-vivisectionists battled with the medical community over the use of animal subjects in experiments both critical and trivial, and lost. Since then any objection to such experiments has been seen as sentimental, childish, and unprogressive. My novel is my attempt to think about this again. Also to ask what it means to be a human animal. I’ve got no easy answers and I’m not trying to proselytize. I hope readers will also be interested in thinking about these things.These are things that I already think about: I've never taken my children to the circus or Marineland; wouldn't go to a zoo if it wasn't involved in a significant breeding program; will never go on a dolphin ride at a Caribbean resort (especially since The Cove); try my best to buy cruelty-free products; and we don't eat mammals. Beyond the few shocking stories about medical research labs, there's little guidance about how the reader should react to this book. **here's the spoiler** Since Fern, like all captive-raised chimps, is eventually too strong to handle, she should never have been brought into a home to begin with -- in the end, she can only be interacted with through bullet-proof glass despite the early efforts to anthropomorphise her relationship with Rosemary: they were never sisters, and that undermines the tragedy of Fern's banishment. And Lowell, who appears to be a freedom fighter, is eventually shown to be mentally unstable: is it not possible to take a principled stand without becoming a fanatic? **end spoiler** The serious themes are also somewhat diluted by the chatty tone of the book and the John Irvingesque zaniness brought in by Harlow and Ezra (and that curious marionette). And, my personal pet peeve, if the main character in a book that deals with memory is named Rosemary, don't have another character point out, "Rosemary for remembrance. Awesome." A straight-up-the-middle-of-the-road-three-star-book.
And here's where I reveal my hypocrisy: despite not eating mammals, Dave is now working at a pork processing plant and has gotten both girls a job there for the summer. Kennedy is on the kill floor in Detection: the freshly gutted and scalded carcasses go by and she marks out any flaws that need to be dealt with (smears of poop, boils, hair, dangling testicles). Mallory is on the cut and pack side, trimming and packing pig wings (her official title is Pig Boner, haha).
Is this crazy, ironic hypocrisy for people who won't eat pork? Here's my consolation: this plant is a farmer owned co-op operation, not some huge and mindless factory farm/evil corporation. Confronting the reality of where food comes from is a lesson everyone should learn (I worked at a chicken processor as a teenager, myself), and I am consoled by Dave's assurance that where he works is as cruelty-free as possible (for a place in the killing business...)
And here's my other beef : I read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves because it was on the newly-released Man Booker longlist, and that makes me sad. This is the first year that the literary prize is open to American authors, and this book doesn't fit in with what I've come to expect from my favourite book prize. The longlist this year is dominated by Brits and Americans and doesn't have the interesting African or Indian or Caribbean (or Canadian...) books that I've used the Booker prize to introduce me to in prior years. One of the judges said (can't find the actual quote now) that this year's books all look at new ways of storytelling, and for that reason, I can see why We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is on the list -- the higgledy-piggledy format is the best part.
Since the main character, Rosemary, has a penchant for big words, here are a few I found delightful:
Refulgent: shining brightly.
Oneiric: of or relating to dreams or dreaming.
Lacuna: an unfilled space or interval; a gap; a missing portion in a book or manuscript. (This last I've read before, but I'm unsure if I knew the definition)
And the last point: I really did like the idea of the "uncanny valley" theory which explains why people think this is funny:
And this is terrifying:
And I say terrifying because my 11-year-old nephew made me promise to never trick him into looking at a picture of Jeff the Killer. And of course I had fun with that -- googling images of cute kittens and saying, "Would you like to see some cute pictures , Conor?"
"No way, Auntie Krista. You're not tricking me into looking at scary pictures."
"Come on, they're adorable. Would I trick you?"
"Please don't trick me." Both hands in front of his face, peeking through his fingers and squirming, "I'll look, but you better not be tricking me because I won't forgive you ever." Peeks. "Oh, hahaha, they are cute. But you better not ever trick me into looking at pictures of Jeff the Killer."
And still, I look at that picture and wonder why it would be more frightening than a picture of an actual monster, but, there you go -- uncanny valley effect in action.
*****
Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2014, with my ranking:
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
To Rise Again At a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
