Book Review!
It's another lovely day here in the northeast. Grey skies, cold drizzle and miserable moods. Sounds like a perfect day to stay indoors and read! I recently joined a book club to help me get back into reading and to find some new gems to fall in love with. I don't know about you, but I get into a book reading rut where I read the same authors over and over and kind of lose interest fast.
The first book we read as a group was Karen Joy Fowler’s ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’.
This would not have been a book I would of normally picked out myself, so it was already paying off to be in a book club. I was not familiar with the author, so I was not sure what to expect when I started this read. For me the book started off slow and I almost put it down, never to be finished.
The story is narrated by the main character, Rosemary Cooke, as she takes us through some tough times in her family life. Up until the second part of the book I was very confused on the sibling situation and why a family would get rid of a child. It all becomes very clear in the second half as we learn the Cooke's took on raising a young chimp, Fern, as she were their child. Rosemary and Fern were raised together and that takes a toll on a young family. A lot of family drama becomes of this when Fern needs to be let go and her older brother lashes out against animal testing.
This book brings a lot of attention to the animal testing and cruelty that went on in the 70's and is still around today. It also takes you deep into psychological behavior due to such events in life. Rosemary Cooke told the story as if she were the who was witnessing all of this crazy stuff happening around here, when in reality she was the one who was experiencing a lot of psychological damage from the lifestyle her family chose to live while she was a child. It also digs deep into animal psychology and how they react in different situations.
Though this was a slow read, it was a very interesting one. I felt like I took away a lot of knowledge and I felt the emotion in the story. If you are looking for something that will make you think, and give you some knowledge, this is a good book. You must give it time, but it does come around. I didn't want to give away all of the book, in case someone wants to read it for themselves.
Have any of you read this book? Are you familiar with the author? Let me know what you thought!
The first book we read as a group was Karen Joy Fowler’s ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’.
This would not have been a book I would of normally picked out myself, so it was already paying off to be in a book club. I was not familiar with the author, so I was not sure what to expect when I started this read. For me the book started off slow and I almost put it down, never to be finished.
The story is narrated by the main character, Rosemary Cooke, as she takes us through some tough times in her family life. Up until the second part of the book I was very confused on the sibling situation and why a family would get rid of a child. It all becomes very clear in the second half as we learn the Cooke's took on raising a young chimp, Fern, as she were their child. Rosemary and Fern were raised together and that takes a toll on a young family. A lot of family drama becomes of this when Fern needs to be let go and her older brother lashes out against animal testing.
This book brings a lot of attention to the animal testing and cruelty that went on in the 70's and is still around today. It also takes you deep into psychological behavior due to such events in life. Rosemary Cooke told the story as if she were the who was witnessing all of this crazy stuff happening around here, when in reality she was the one who was experiencing a lot of psychological damage from the lifestyle her family chose to live while she was a child. It also digs deep into animal psychology and how they react in different situations.
Though this was a slow read, it was a very interesting one. I felt like I took away a lot of knowledge and I felt the emotion in the story. If you are looking for something that will make you think, and give you some knowledge, this is a good book. You must give it time, but it does come around. I didn't want to give away all of the book, in case someone wants to read it for themselves.
Have any of you read this book? Are you familiar with the author? Let me know what you thought!