Monday, August 31, 2015

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves | Astonish Me



Two of the three books I read over my holidays were worth recommending: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler was refreshingly not at all what I expected, and since finishing it I’ve found myself thinking of it regularly and reflecting on the  particular ethical problem it raises (note to Barbara Kingsolver: This is how sneaky teaching is done!). Plus, I love the title of this book. It scores an extra point just for that. It’s a very cleverly-written story about a college student named Rosemary who’s still making sense of her family’s dramatic history, and I highly recommend it. I like that I didn’t know what to expect before reading; I’ll say no more so that you can be just as surprised as I was by the twist (unless you guess it, which I didn’t). 
Rosemary’s father is a psychologist in Fowler’s book, which is a handy (though not especially relevant) segue into the other book I wanted to talk about: Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead (there’s a dad who’s a psychologist in this one, too, but it’s not a particularly huge part of the storyline. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it). This book’s about Joan and her life both before and after leaving a ballet corps. (Ballet makes me think of young adult fiction, which is possibly insulting to professional dancers, but this is not young adult fiction.) It’s well written – a notch or two above what I expect from popular fiction – and was just a good read. The story is not dramatic but is still compelling, and I walked away with an overall sense of being completely satisfied with the book. 

(The third novel I read, The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis, was less funny than I expected; the main character was a jerk, and I was left with the distinct impression that the author probably is too [I’ve just googled his name with ‘misogynist’ and found that the term was linked with him well before I thought to do it]. The book won an award, though, so maybe I totally missed the point.)

4 comments:

  1. I just read we are all completely beside ourselves because it got the best staff review in a bookshop that I had to. The twist surprised me too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad to hear it! For those who haven't read it, after the twist the author says something along the lines of, "You may have already guessed this," and I was left feeling like perhaps everyone else in the world was quicker than I was. :)

      Delete
  2. People keep recommending 'We are all completely beside ourselves'. I must read it!! One of the funniest books I have ever read is Lucky Jim by Martin's dad Kingsley. Over the years I've realised more and more what a misogynist streak runs through it and the one book I read by Martin was similar. But if you can grit your teeth on the sexism, Lucky Jim is worth a read.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I read Lucky Jim in 2011, and I loved it! (I don't remember noticing any sexism - I think this may be the key difference between four-years-ago me and today-me.) Do you have any other funny book recommendations? I've started reading Hitchhiker's again, but it's not as hilarious as it was the first (or second) time around.

      Delete