Book Review: Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

We are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a novel about the Cooke Family. A father, a Mother, a Brother (Lowell), a Sister (Fern) and our protagonist Rosemary. Spoiler alert: Fern is a chimpanzee. I thought at great lengths whether or not to say this fact seeing as the first few chapters hide it from you. However I think you're supposed to know that Fern is a Chimp, I think Fowler anticipates you knowing because you read the back of the book, or you read about the book in the NY Times, or your friend told you. Anyway I think it is part of Fowler's craft, keeping the reader in the dark even though they already know what is coming. That seems to be the structure of the entire narrative. The protagonist Rosemary tells us straight up that she's starting in the middle of the story. From there she takes us on a wild ride; jumping from memory to memory, decoding them, adding details, taking parts out that were made up, pulling some details (even some memories) out of her deep subconscious, all while dealing with the harsh realities these memories have caused for her. I have never been on such a realistic and deeply personal journey with a fictional character before.

And Rosemary's journey is a pretty fantastic one. Fern was a chimpanzee that her father, a prominent psychology professor and scientist, was studying in conjunction to Rosemary herself. That means these two children were both experiments on language, understanding, and psychology. They grew up in a house full of grad students and observations on their games, conversations, and interactions. Obviously man has a lot to learn from chimps, Because they are so closely related to humans a study performed on chimps is a study performed on The Self. Much like Fowler's novel is a study of the self. Each memory that Rosemary recalls is initially foggy, she has repressed a lot. Having a chimp for a sister and the trauma that follows has clearly left her with guilt, emotional damage, self loathing, etc... But mostly it has left her with a lot of questions. We meet Rosemary right at the moment in her life when she wishes to finally face these questions, naturally when she is in college. Her parents are too Midwestern and guilt laden to provide her with the answers and she won't get anything from her missing fanatic brother; so she looks into her self. Fowler's protagonist is so genuine and so real in her guilt that you can't help but become infatuated with her inner journey.

This is because we are so used to totally omniscient narrators and suspense coming from plot points. But Rosemary's journey through her memory is different. For one it is incredibly difficult because she was so young. Each memory has to be carefully reconstructed physically to make sure it is real. For example she has a memory that pops into her head from time to time, of her father purposefully running over a cat, but she knows this cannot be a real memory as she would not be able to see over the dash in her car seat. It was a memory that she fabricated as a young child. And this has obviously been done before, in college we all learned about narrators that couldn't be trusted  and our professors used to think it blew our minds. However Rosemary's "unreliability" isn't tricky, she's trying to bring the audience with her to the truth, not hide the truth. In this way we are watching a character face facts and be honest with themselves, our narrator has to be willing to say "I've repressed that memory because...", which makes you absolutely love her. Because we have these sorts of moments where we are fighting to be honest with ourselves, especially in the context of where and who we are now, being a result of where we came from. The feelings evoked in this journey are so potent, if only because they are invariably true of all people.

And speaking of truth, it seems like Fowler had to have actually had this happen to her (obviously it did't). She writes so vividly, not because every action performed by her character is a deliberate one, wrought with detail, but rather because every single one of her characters messes up, or says something stupid, or that they regret, or they do something stupid or incomplete, arbitrary. As I said before, Fowler's novel is a study of the self and we won't necessary like what we see. It makes us ask if everything we hate about ourselves, if every mistake we ever made, was totally preventable. This is the type of question that makes us hate novelists like Fowler, we want to believe that our past did not create us, but the only way to be free of the mistakes we made in the past is to face them in the present. Fowler's study is to show us a mirror, via a chimp, where we see the very worst of ourselves. The results of the study? When the subject looks in the mirror and sees their self, they are proven to be a more intelligent, rational, and free human being. They lead a much more honest life, if not a happier one.

"The world runs on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don't mind what they don't see. Make them look and they mind, but you're the one they hate, because you're the one that made them look" - Lowell on the seemingly impossible task of stopping animal cruelty. A point that rings so painfully true in my life and the lives of anyone who wishes the best for all creatures.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We've all heard that our identity is not a matter of choice. We don't choose our race, we don't choose our gender, we don't choose our sexual orientation. But in Americanah by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, this claim is wrapped in the poetry of a love story. Which sounds really cheesy; we don't choose our identity like we don't choose our soul mate...sounds stupid. However when Adichie does this, in the way she writes her novel, it is far from stupid, it is just the truth.

The novel's protagonist Ifemelu, is a Nigerian immigrant to America. Though, she is also so much more than that. Ifemelu, is beautiful, she's smart, she's hard working, she has values. Which are things you expect out of every literary character, but in Americanah, attributes like these play a tremendous role in the lives of the characters, more so than other novels. For example Ifemelu, due to her attractiveness, finds a rich white boyfriend in the states who uses his money/power to get her a green card and an eventual path to citizenship. Something she may not have gotten had she not been very pretty, smart, or an immigrant (the white fellow would not have dated an American Black). Privilege in this book comes across as more idiosyncratic, every little aspect of our identity can manifest into privilege (or the opposite), and to Ifemelu, it is impossible to fight, the only way to combat it is to merely notice it.

And reading Americanah it hits you how true that is. How the aspects of our identity, including our privilege, carry us through life. We are simply along for the ride. So what is Ifemelu's response? To write a blog. Ifemelu is a young blogger who starts the prolific race blog; Various Observations About American Blacks by a Non American Black. The novel is peppered with posts from this blog; posts about Barack Obama, about questions one will get as a black woman, a very kick ass post on hair. But they are never argumentative, only observations. Ifemelu is acutely aware that being pragmatic will not change your identity, but demonstrating how ones identity might effect their living conditions, leaves the reader with the irrefutable message of love and understanding. This way no one feels the need to escape their identity, or try to become something else.

Which is all anyone is ever trying to do in this novel. In Nigeria, all of the character's were trying to become European; putting their kid's in European schools, structuring their families the way Europeans do, going to Europe on vacation, moving to Europe.  In America everyone is trying to become rich, many who are black are trying to become white (or less black). Some American's are trying to become non-American (while laughably trying to hold on to the privileges that being American comes with). Everyone is living this single track story of someone other than who they really are. There is a painful lack of honesty. Which is why Ifemelu's blogs (she starts one in both America and Nigeria) are so important. More importantly though, is Obinze.

As I said, the novel is, at its heart, a love story. Obinze is Ifemelu's love in Nigeria, she moves, loses touch, he moves on, she comes back etc...(no spoilers). Though they both have other partners, they both have other lives, we as the reader get the feeling they are not fulfilled with anyone but each other. One is constantly present in the other's life, no matter how hard they try, they cannot choose to stop loving one another. In this way, one is part of the other's identity. The love they share is not something that even the most traumatic of drama can shake. Loving who we are truly meant to love is the most beautifully metaphoric way to tell those struggling with their identity to be who they were meant to be. The language of Aichie's love is so somatic that it cannot be interpreted as love that one decides to walk towards or away from, but the love that one falls into, the way one falls into their body, or their situation, or their sexual preferences.  And if we can love someone else with no choice in the matter, then there is no reason we can't love ourselves and who we are.