we are all completely beside ourselves review

fresh diction and madcap plot bend the tone toward comedy, but it never mislays its solemn raison d'etre. 'A novel so readably juicy and surreptitiously smart, it deserves all the attention it can get. Publisher: Profile Books Ltd ISBN: 9781788167109 Number of pages: 336 Weight: 260 g Dimensions: 196 x 126 x 28 mm Edition: Main MEDIA REVIEWS One of the few studies Rosemary doesn't quote says that spoilers actually enhance reading. We hope you enjoy it, and if, when you're telling a friend about it, you do decide to spill the beans about Fern - it's pretty hard to resist - don't worry. It's funny, clever, intimate, honest, analytical and swirling with ideas that will come back to bite you. So now she's telling her story: full of hilarious asides and brilliantly spiky lines, it's a looping narrative that begins towards the end, and then goes back to the beginning. And it was this decision, made by her parents, to give Rosemary a sister like no other, that began all of Rosemary's trouble. There's something unique about Rosemary's sister, Fern. Both are now gone - vanished from her life. Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. So we're not going to tell you too much either: you'll have to find out for yourselves, round about page 77, what it is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other. Rosemary's young, just at college, and she's decided not to tell anyone a thing about her family. If five-year-old Rosie finds it hard to understand the reason behind her parents’ decision to part her from her near-twin, her brother Lowell, a few years older than both of them, is filled with rage and grief.Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 These symptoms, we go on to discover, are all related to Rosie’s early trauma of separation from her sister Fern, who was adopted by her family when both of them were just a few months old. But, to her horror, Rosie starts feeling a near-forgotten desire to talk incessantly welling up within her uncontrollably-along with other worrying habits such as twitching, scratching herself, and pulling out her hair in anxiety. Her brief brush with the police and uneasy friendship with Harlow take Rosie back to her childhood, especially to the juvenile tics she thought she had conquered years ago.

One day when Harlow, a self-styled Bohemian girl high on substances and quick to tempers, flares up in the college canteen and wreaks havoc, Rosie finds herself unable to stop imitating Harlow’s delinquent outburst. The novel opens with Rosemary, or Rosie as she is known among her friends and family, getting into trouble with the law in spite of herself.

We are all completely beside ourselves review