We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

[big big spoiler alert]

Start in the middle. When a story is too hard to tell, when the beginning taunts you and the end haunts you, the middle is an easier place, a safer place, to start.

So, that's where we meet Rosemary. In the middle of her story. She's telling us about the disappearance of her sister, Fern. About her mothers turmoil, her father's decline. It's right about the middle where her brother, Lowell, leaves home. 

She's re-telling the story of her 5 year old self. Not understanding much, being told even less. Yearning for her sister's return. Her memories too young to demand clarity. Any she does have she questions. Are they real? Are they her own? Or those that form and crystallise on the retelling by someone else?

It's only later, once Rosemary is comfortable with the reader, trusts us, does she tell us what she keeps secret from those that know her adult self. 

Fern is alive. 

Fern was taken. 

Fern is a chimpanzee.

(Ok. I'll admit at this point I very almost put the book down)

We are forced to confront our feelings about this new knowledge. I felt cheated for a few pages. My empathy was already invested. She said Fern was her sister. She never told me Fern was a chimp. 

Question is, does this change anything?

(I tiptoed further into the story but this time more carefully. I didn't want to be tricked again)

Open mind. Read on.

So, Fern and Rosemary were raised together as babies since Fern arrived at 3 months old. Their father, a psychologist, works at the local university. Their house is full of grad students. 

Observing. Recording. Analysing. Theorising. Concluding.

It's a study of Human vs Chimp. Who learns faster, grows tallest, communicates best. The study is meant to be of Fern. But the experiment involves both sisters. 

Fern and Rosemary are inseparable. Learning, playing, sleeping, eating. Their worlds are one. 

So when Fern disappears from the family home, Rosemary is inconsolable. She doesn't know how to live in a world without her sister, her twin. Human children avoid her, scared of her unnerving chimp-learnt expressions and noises which co-exist amongst her human words and features. She's an amalgam. Chimp-girl.

After the middle, we swing ape like back and forth between the beginning and the end as we learn the answers Rosemary seeks as she picks at old memories and uncovers new truths...

Where is Fern?

Where is Lowell?

What happened that day?

And where did all this guilt come from?