We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

My reactions to this story oscillated between sadness and amusement. The story is about a psychologist father who raises a chimpanzee as his daughter, alongside his human daughter of the same age and his older son. When things fall apart, the family falls apart as well but it’s never really spoken about openly within the family. While the consequences sit with these people for the rest of their lives, it’s only when the human sister Rosemary becomes an adult that things become clear. It’s a sad tale because everybody suffers from the father’s earnest, but I believe misguided, quest for understanding. It rang all together too true following the publicity about the fate of Nim, a chimpanzee raised in similar circumstances and about whom there was a film made recently. Heart breaking stuff really. We are thrilled by the humanity of these animals and exploit them in our search for more knowledge and then junk them, despite their recognizably near-human emotions and intellect, when our research purposes are fulfilled. At the same time this story is whacky, filled with extreme and very odd characters undertaking all sorts of crazy adventures. I didn’t really find that part of it believable yet it was in the middle of another story line (the chimp one) that was very close to reality. An odd mix.