This was helped by the fact that I sympathised with Rosemary despite her lack of motivation for her studies and her inability to hold a friendship. I found the book an easy, enjoyable read. Throughout the story she moves from fighting this to embracing it. For Rosemary it is clear the effect is permanent, and she is left with some social skills which are decidedly simian. Rosemary and Fern were part of an experiment looking at the effects of raising a human and a chimp together. Why did her parents send Fern away? Where is she now? Most readers probably spot that something isn’t quite normal, but the big reveal may come as a surprise: her sister was a chimpanzee. The loss of her sister has shaped Rosemary’s life, and the book starts with many of her unanswered questions. Although the book doesn’t focus on life as a researcher, it gives an interesting insight into experiments involving animals in the 1970s. We follow her attempts to fit in with her university contemporaries and to come to terms with her family history. It is clear that Karen Joy Fowler had done her research and this allowed for interesting insightsĮditor's note:This review contains spoilers.Ī readable, thought-provoking book, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Serpent's Tail, 2014) is told from the perspective of a professor’s student daughter, Rosemary. Growing pains: detail from the paperback cover
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