We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

 

This is the story of Rosemary Cooke's life.  She grew up with a psychologist father, a mother, a brother Lowell and Fern.  Fern was a chimpanzee but until Rosemary was five, she considered Fern as her sister.  They were raised together since they were three months old as an experiment her father was running for his university.  

But when Rosemary was five, things abruptly changed.  Fern was sent away after several incidents indicated she might be getting violent and difficult to control.  She was sent away while the children were gone, ripped from their lives, leaving them to wonder if love was always conditional and if they would be facing the same fate themselves.  Lowell, who was a teenager, left soon after, unable to reconcile himself to the decision.  Rosemary spent her life chasing after that closeness she had encountered with Fern.

Karen Joy Fowler is an American author whose work is in the fields of literary fiction but also fantasy.  Two of her seven novels have been longlisted for the Booker Prize.  In this novel, she makes the reader think about human relationships with animals and whether the current frenzy of over familiarizing animals is in the best interest of either animals or humans.  She also brings up the subject of animal cruelty such as the lab experiments and the way animals are raised for consumption by humans.  There is much for the reader to think about in the novel about the proper relationship between animals and humans.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.