I thought that We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was going to be silly. A girl who misses her chimpanzee sister? Sheesh. Ridiculous. To my surprise, I loved this book. I mean I really loved it. Somehow Karen Joy Fowler made me believe in this unusual family, made it feel not so unusual, and kept me captive until the end. When we meet Rosemary, she is an 18 year-old college student with a strange but loveable group of friends. She goes out of her way to never speak of her family – she doesn’t think she can. From here, we go forward and backward in time to gather the story of her family: the brother and sister she lost, the tension/aloofness between her parents, and her childhood growing up with her chimpanzee sister Fern. I know that last part makes you think it will be wacky or science-fiction-y, but I promise it’s not. It’s more Jane Goodall than Planet of the Apes. I think it’s stellar.