We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: Home
Articles, Interviews, and Reviews
- The Other Sister Karen Joy Fowler’s ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’The New York Times
By Barbara Kingsolver
Published: June 6, 2013 - An Interview with Karen Joy FowlerBookslut, October 2013
- An Interview with Karen Joy FowlerThe American Reader
Other Works by Karen Joy Fowler
Wit's EndISBN: 9780399154751
The Jane Austen Book ClubISBN: 9780399151613
Sister NoonISBN: 9780399147500
The Sweetheart SeasonISBN: 9780805047370
Sarah CanaryISBN: 9780821740880
What I Didn't SeeISBN: 9781931520683
The Science of HerselfISBN: 9781604868258
Videos
Discussion Questions
(From the Lit Lovers)
1. Early on in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the character Rosemary Cooke tells the reader that she will start her story "in the middle." Why is it important to her to skip the beginning?
2. Rosemary recounts many memories of the chimpanzee Fern and their brief life together. How were she and Fern, in the language of the novel, "Same" and "NotSame"? What does their relationship suggest about the compatibility of humans and primates? How are humans different from other animals?
3. How did being co-raised with a chimpanzee impact Rosemary's development? In what ways was she different from other, "normal" children? How does she still differ from them to this day?
4. Consider Rosemary's father and mother. Are they good parents? Should they have handled Fern's leaving any differently? If so, how?
5. Each member of the Cooke family was dramatically-indeed, traumatically-affected by the loss of Fern. Did they share a personal sense of guilt? Of regret? Of responsibility for what happened? If so, how did these emotions manifest themselves in each family member? How do their responses enrich our understanding of these people?
6. What is your opinion of Rosemary's brother, Lowell Cooke? Are his extreme views and actions at all justified? Does he truly have Fern's well-being at heart?
7. How does Harlow Fielding's whirlwind entrance into Rosemary Cooke's world alter Rosemary's trajectory through life?
8. Think about the significance of memory and storytelling in the novel. How is Rosemary's memory-and, consequently, her narrative-affected by the emotional trauma she has experienced?
9. Consider Harlow Fielding and Ezra Metzger's failed attempt to liberate monkeys from the primate center, both the motivations of these co-conspirators and the outcome itself. Was their mission in any way an admirable act? How were Harlow and Ezra's intentions different or similar to Lowell's?
10. Do you think Rosemary comes to find peace with her family history by the end of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves?
11. Is animal experimentation ever justified? If so, under what circumstances?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Suggestions for further reading
A Beautiful Truth by ISBN: 9781616953157A powerful and haunting meditation on human nature told from the dual perspectives of a Vermont family that has adopted a chimp as a surrogate son, and a group of chimpanzees in a Florida research institute.
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by ISBN: 9780446571579Bruno Littlemore is quite unlike any chimpanzee in the world. Precocious, self-conscious and preternaturally gifted, young Bruno, born and raised in a habitat at the local zoo, falls under the care of a university primatologist named Lydia Littlemore. Learning of Bruno's ability to speak, Lydia takes Bruno into her home to oversee his education and nurture his passion for painting. But for all of his gifts, the chimpanzee has a rough time caging his more primal urges.
Never Let Me Go by ISBN: 9781400043392As a child, Kathy, now thirty-one years old, lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.
