Come and chat to PEN Faulkner Award winner and bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler about WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES, and her previous books, Tue 29 July, 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

There are many unusual families, but few are quite as unusual as Rosemary's. Rosemary is the bright, quirky and very funny narrator of Karen Joy Fowler's award winning novel WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES. Rosemary used to have a sister and a brother, but both have disappeared. And because this is such an extraordinary family, with an extremely surprising story, it is better that Rosemary tells you herself how it all happened.

Please keep your spoiler alert antennae well-tuned, and try and discuss the book without giving the game away...

You can find out more at our book of the month page, and at Karen's website which includes an excerpt and stunning reviews from her legions of fans, from Alice Sebold to Barbara Kingsolver.

Serpent's Tail have 50 copies to give to Mumsnetters: to claim your free copy, please fill in your details on the book of the month page. If you're not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can always get your paperback or Kindle version here.

We are delighted that Karen will be joining us to discuss WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES, her previous novels and her writing life on Tuesday 29 July, 9-10pm. So please feel free to (carefully) discuss the book here throughout the month, pop up any advance questions and we will see you all here, Tue 29 July.

@TickTock123

This book sounds like it was written about me? Oddball and different to any other living being I would like to read this on holidays and find out the hype is as true,as the book seems to be living it up at the moment Please make me your happy smiley winner

I expect we are all oddballs at heart.

@AmyTanFan

It's rare that I finish a book and then want to go back to the beginning and read it all over again to catch every nuance. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is just brilliant.

Thank you so much. And who doesn't love Amy Tan?

@RunningKatie

I've read one of Karen's books before and really enjoyed it.

I'm half way through this book and am not finding it a page turner to be honest. I just cannot empathise with the main character and her family. I took it on holiday and it wasn't a gripping page turner. I will persist and see if it improves!

Hope it did, but no harm if it didn't. No book is for everyone or even close to everyone. Thanks for giving it a go.

@GrouchingTiggerHiddenSomething

Thanks for my copy I found it an interesting read. It made me think. I thought it was an interesting subject and well handled, I liked the structure of the narrative with jumping around in time and unreliable memories being a theme. It took me a while to get into but that is probably because I read a lot less these days than I used to, not so much time. At times I found I had put it down because it was slightly disturbing (deliberate? or maybe just me), but I'm glad I persevered to the end.

Anyway, interesting and thought provoking, thanks again.

I do know that much of the material covered, particularly those bits related to animal research are a very hard go, especially to the tender-hearted. Sorry about that, but there it is.

@ShyPhilosopher

First of all, thank you so much to Mumsnet for kindly sending me a free copy of this book. Feels like such a treat to have a brand new book to read.

I think it's a very difficult book to discuss, without giving away any spoilers. I had watched a documentary, just a couple of months back, about a similar set-up to the one described in the book & feel it must have heavily influenced the story. The subject of the documentary even gets a brief mention in the story. I appreciated the section at the back of the book explaining how the story was inspired.

Will try & drop back when everyone else has completed the book, so it can be discussed fully.

The documentary is something I saw after I had largely finished my book, but the documentary is based on another book that I certainly read first. So yes, lots of influence there.

@TillyBookClub

And I'd love to nip another quick question in:

You are on the Booker long list in the first year it has allowed Americans on the list - do you tend to read equal amounts of UK and American fiction? And who are your favorite contemporary authors at the moment?

I would say first, that it's been an enormous thrill to be one of the first Americans allowed on the longlist. A big surprise and a bigger thrill. I don't think about whether I'm reading an American or an English (or a Canadian or Nigerian or whatever novelist) unless the subject matter is specific to the writer's nationality. So I try to read pretty widely.

What do you consider the most pertinent lesson we can learn from the familial and companion relationships of chimpanzees? Do you think the development of Rosemary's character and her relationship with her father, mother and Harvey demonstrates this in a positive light?

@KarenJoyFowler

[quote TillyBookClub] And I'd love to nip another quick question in:

You are on the Booker long list in the first year it has allowed Americans on the list - do you tend to read equal amounts of UK and American fiction? And who are your favorite contemporary authors at the moment?

I would say first, that it's been an enormous thrill to be one of the first Americans allowed on the longlist. A big surprise and a bigger thrill. I don't think about whether I'm reading an American or an English (or a Canadian or Nigerian or whatever novelist) unless the subject matter is specific to the writer's nationality. So I try to read pretty widely.[/quote]

Favorite contemporary writers is a pretty long list -- I love Hilary Mantel and Ursula LeGuin, Molly Gloss and Kelly Link, Ted Chiang and Chang-rae Lee, David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood.

@LorrieJ

What do you consider the most pertinent lesson we can learn from the familial and companion relationships of chimpanzees? Do you think the development of Rosemary's character and her relationship with her father, mother and Harvey demonstrates this in a positive light?

I think the most pertinent lesson is that we don't belong in the same home together. It is cruel to raise a chimpanzee in a human environment when we all know, as we now do, that sooner or later a very different home awaits the chimp.
Second most pertinent lesson: Franz de Waal, one of our premiere primatologists says that children are naturally empathetic and we also observe empathy in all the great apes, so it is part of our Darwinian heritage, which is the good news. The bad news is that the great apes appear to extend this empathy only to those they see as being like themselves. For the “other”, we have what de Waal calls “an empathy deficit;” we are not just neutral, we have an active antipathy. So this, I could argue, is one of the great projects of literature – to expand the circle of who is like us until we finally see that everyone is like us. Chimps are so like us – that one is easy.

@ricecakeaddict

I didn't get a book through the giveaway but the positive feedback here encouraged me to read it...and I'm really pleased I did.

I think the unique focus, and interesting issues it raised, will stay with me for a long time....

The only thing I didn't like is the fact I knew which page the twist happened on in advance so didn't really concentrate and get absorbed into the book until I reached that page! Until then I thought it was going to be a normal dysfunctional family book but it got much better after that!

I think you make a great point about knowing the twist is coming and how that damages the reading experience. Clearly I wrote a book that was very hard to market and review without giving something away and even knowing that there is something to give away, is giving something away.

@missorinoco

Thankyou for this book. It was a very interesting twist, I hadn't predicted that slant on the book.

I found it very poignant. There was no happy answer or happy ending, but it was better for it. It made me think a lot during the book, and stretched my knowledge. I looked up a number of theories I was unfamiliar with.

Not a light hearted read, but very worth it.

Full credit from the author. To go from self awareness of life as the child of a psychologist to this plot (avoiding spoilers) by reading around the subject shows a level of writing and creative thinking beyond the reach of many.

Wow! Thank you so much for this.

@ladydepp

I won a copy of this book, thank you. It's a fabulous book and very derserving of a Booker nomination. It moved me to tears quite a few times. I will definitely be recommending it!

I do agree with another poster in that I loved the beginning, loved the end but got a bit lost and muddled in the middle.

I think the characters are drawn beautifully, very sympathetic for the reader but also very human and real. Rosemary's family is so realistic, I can picture them in my mind and really enjoyed getting to know them all.

I had no idea that Fern wasn't a little girl until it was revealed. When I went back I could see that there were clues but I didn't pick up on them! My question for the author is: Was this an important part of the writing of the book for you, that Fern was established as an integral part of the family before she was revealed to be non-human? Or did you expect readers to pick up on it before it was actually spelled out?

Yes to the first part, very important part and why I started in the middle. I hoped readers would not pick up on Fern’s chimpiness before they were told, but readers are always so smart, I thought I’d better not count on it.

@LauraChant

I have coincidentally just finished this book although didn't know it was going to be the subject of a webchat. I was blindsided by the reveal, and couldn't put it down after that. I read it on Kindle so had no clues from cover or blurb.

My question would have been along the lines of ladydepp's - did you really think readers would guess about Fern, as I think Rosemary suggests, saying something like "you probably already guessed", and if not, what inferences did you think readers would draw about Fern? I did wonder why she couldn't go to nursery and more worryingly why neither grandmother wanted to give her her name but was so caught up in the story - I have two young children so have to read quickly - that I didn't think about it too much.

However since that question has kind of already been asked is it cheating to asky something else? There are a lot of references to Star Wars in the book which I noticed as my boys are obsessed with the franchise. Is there a reason for this, is there a way in which you feel Star Wars feeds into the theme of the book, or do you just like it?!

My own children are about Rosemary’s age so I plumbed their childhoods vigorously. During this period, Star Wars was the game, in the yards, the schoolyards, the parks, the living rooms, the hedgerows -- it was all Star Wars all the time. When I grew up we played Cowboys and Indians and Germans and Yanks, and the game itself was exactly the same – you ran around and shot at each other and argued over who was dead and who wasn’t and how long you had to stay dead if you were shot. So only the nomenclature changed. With work, I’m sure I could come up with some themes that parallel the Star Wars movies, but in all honesty, I was just going for period detail. I also included Garbage Pail Kid cards, which if you look at the actual dates of those, it is a real stretch, so I hope you don’t. I threw in Garbage Pail Kids because my children loved them.
My editor doesn't care much for popular culture. Enough with the Star Wars, she told me.

@khuliloach

Firstly, thank you very much for the book. I have just finished it today. I really enjoyed it though not sure I understood it all! I've never been to uni/college or America and some of the words and phrases I just didn't get, maybe it's just me.

Also my fav character was Fern but felt there wasn't enough about her. I loved the first quarter of the book, didn't like the middle so much and liked the end a bit more than the middle. I would recommend it as a read but wasn't one of my favourite books I have to say.

Interesting story though and very cleverly written.

It's not just you. Rosemary has a preposterous vocabulary. Much bigger than mine.

@khuliloach

I really enjoyed this book, and strangely now looking back think I enjoyed it more than I thought at the time. I keep thinking about the story and Fern.

I would like to ask Karen how she came up with the idea for the story, does she feel differently about chimpanzees since researching the book and has she started on her next novel.

The book was inspired in part by a real-life experiment in the 1930s, in which two scientists, a husband-and-wife team, tried to raise a baby chimpanzee in their home as if she were human, along with their own child. That experiment didn’t last long; there was a rumor that their infant son soon began adopting chimp behaviors. Because my father was a psychologist himself I can’t remember when I first heard about this experiment. Many decades ago. But I talked to my daughter about it and she was the one who suggested it might make for an interesting novel.

I began to read the nonfiction accounts of home-raised chimps.  I think I really committed to it, when I read how all the home-raised chimps, when asked to sort photos of chimps and humans into the two piles make only the one mistake of putting their own picture in with the humans.  There was just something so heartbreaking about that fact, particularly given, as we know now, but perhaps didn’t in the days of the early experiments, that the chimps are eventually going to end up in zoos or medical labs or, best case, sanctuaries.

I am just barely started on my next book. I think. We'll see.

Your answer to LorrieJ is fascinating. I did have a train of thought about halfway through the book where I imagined if Fern was a dog, or a pig (or any animal that has tested very highly in what we call intelligence) - how would we feel differently about the story?

@Belo

Thank you mumsnet for my copy of the book. I have just finished it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to join the web chat this evening so I would like to post my questions to Karen in advance.

1. The book started in the middle. Did you know what the beginning and ends were when you started writing it? I.e. did you write it chronologically and then change the order or was this mixed up order always your intention? I thought chosen order is very clever. It was a real shock to discover there was a chimpanzee. I couldn't work out why Fern was not with the family but not dead.

1. I couldn't quite work out what Madam Lefarge's role in the story is. To me she is just a comic interlude. Sorry, I've probably missed something crucial here. What is she supposed to signify?

1)I always knew the book would start in the middle and I wrote it in just the sequence you read. Lowell complains that their father, in his careful, scientific way, started by assuming Fern’s difference from humans. This put the onus on Fern to prove herself at every point. Lowell says it would have been just as careful and scientific to start at the other end, assume Fern’s similarities to human children and demand the proof of difference. It would have been more Darwinian, he says, to start with an assumption of kinship.

So I wanted the book to start with the assumption of kinship in that same way. I wanted the reader to assume the similarities, before looking for the differences. In order to accomplish that, I felt I had to talk about Fern first as a sister and only later as a chimpanzee.

I also find the middle the hardest part of any novel to write and I sympathize with you who found it the weakest part. It always is. Though I don't know if you meant the middle that I began with or the middle that came in the middle -- which is really the beginning. All clear?

@KarenJoyFowler

[quote Belo] Thank you mumsnet for my copy of the book. I have just finished it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to join the web chat this evening so I would like to post my questions to Karen in advance.

1. The book started in the middle. Did you know what the beginning and ends were when you started writing it? I.e. did you write it chronologically and then change the order or was this mixed up order always your intention? I thought chosen order is very clever. It was a real shock to discover there was a chimpanzee. I couldn't work out why Fern was not with the family but not dead.

1. I couldn't quite work out what Madam Lefarge's role in the story is. To me she is just a comic interlude. Sorry, I've probably missed something crucial here. What is she supposed to signify?

2. Not at all – lots of people are puzzled as to why Madame Defarge puts in an appearance. Possibly, I’m one of them.

It started when I asked a bunch of friends what weird thing you might find in someone else’s suitcase. I think most of them suggested cheese. This was obviously no help. I settled on a puppet, because a lot of the book is about language and who speaks for whom, and then having done that, I wanted one whose likeness would be immediately identifiable and Madama Defarge’s knitting makes her identity obvious. I wanted an antique so that she would be valuable, so it had to be an old character. I liked the resonances of equality, liberty, and fraternity from the French revolution as they might apply to non-humans as well as humans. But in that mysterious way the brain sometimes thinks of things without our noticing, I realized later that I must have had the name of Stephanie LaFarge in my head. LaFarge was Nim Chimpsky’s first human mother. To get from LaFarge to Defarge is no great leap and apparently my hind-brain was leaping.

@PittTheYounger

I gave up.

Its me, I know

Well, it's a little bit me, too. Every novel is a conversation between writer and reader. Sorry I didn't keep you interested, but thanks for trying.

@Uzma01

I've found it difficult to get into this book, it's not been a major page-turner for me I'm afraid. That said the plot was different and I could empathise alot with Rosemary. The dysfunction of the family is also something else that I thought was interesting and the interplay between Rosemary and the other characters was funny at times and a bit bizarre at other times.

The background information on some other families that had 'adopted' chimps was an intriguing addition. My question is what was the author's reason behind that?

Because I am no chimp expert, I was very dependent on the accounts written by those actually involved in these experiments. I wanted my readers to know that although my story is an entirely fictionalized one, it is based on something real, and also that there were a surprisingly high number of attempts to home-raise chimps.

@TillyBookClub

Your answer to LorrieJ is fascinating. I did have a train of thought about halfway through the book where I imagined if Fern was a dog, or a pig (or any animal that has tested very highly in what we call intelligence) - how would we feel differently about the story?

One of the unanticipated things that happened to me while I researched the story is that I left the narrow beginning of the home-raised chimp studies and grew more interested in animal cognition in general. This is a fast-moving field and a fascinating one.

@KarenJoyFowler

[quote TillyBookClub] Your answer to LorrieJ is fascinating. I did have a train of thought about halfway through the book where I imagined if Fern was a dog, or a pig (or any animal that has tested very highly in what we call intelligence) - how would we feel differently about the story?

The book was a great excuse to look at some of the recent, incredible work being done on animal cognition. Apparently the military toyed with the idea of using crows in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, because of their superior facial recognition skills. I watched you-tube videos of crows sledding and persuaded myself I was doing research. Funny cat videos! Octopi escaping their tanks. Chimps demonstrating their amazing abilities with short-term memory. Elephants painting. Kathryn Hunter’s incredible performance as Red Peter in “Kafka’s Monkey.”

The world is a complicated, surprising, often horrible and often beautiful place. I just hope we can keep it. We’re not the only ones who live here.

@maryburrows

This would have been better if I hadn't read the 5 pages of reviews in the beginning of the copy you kindly sent me before I started to read the story. Dear publisher try not to give plot spoilers- I learnt rather more than I wanted to unfortunately. That aside I still managed to enjoy the characterisation- how everyone reacts to the situation and how the family becomes so dysfunctional. It is a story to be savoured- alternately funny and poignant- reach for a dictionary too there are words to stretch your vocabulary included. Dear author please tell me how you thought of writing so original a plot and why you started writing in the first place. Thank you Karen and Mumsnet for one of my favouritebooks of the year.

Thank you!
I always tell people I started writing because no one ever listens to me when I talk. (I had young children at the time with very selective hearing.)

@KarenJoyFowler

[quote maryburrows] This would have been better if I hadn't read the 5 pages of reviews in the beginning of the copy you kindly sent me before I started to read the story. Dear publisher try not to give plot spoilers- I learnt rather more than I wanted to unfortunately. That aside I still managed to enjoy the characterisation- how everyone reacts to the situation and how the family becomes so dysfunctional. It is a story to be savoured- alternately funny and poignant- reach for a dictionary too there are words to stretch your vocabulary included. Dear author please tell me how you thought of writing so original a plot and why you started writing in the first place. Thank you Karen and Mumsnet for one of my favouritebooks of the year.

But that's just me being glib. I have loved books my whole life and I began to see them as a great conversation, spanning centuries and cultures and even planets. I wanted to be part of that conversation in my small way.

@AnnDaloozier

I'm halfway in. Hardly gripped

Sorry! You have my permission to give up.

I like your answer to MaryBurrows. My four young boys have either stuffed pieces of Lego in their ears or they are just choosing not to hear me....

(and it has also made me want to ask one last question if I can, before we have to wrap up..)

When did you start to write and how did you fit it in around children?