Sunday 20 July 2014

Story Time: 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' by Karen Joy Fowler

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
A proper book for proper people
Some things: 1. This book rocks, 2. This book was just longlisted for the Booker Prize 2014, which means it is a "proper book" for "proper people" which means I am a proper book reading person now!

And we're off: So there's this chick right, and she's kinda whiny and very jealous of pretty much everything and everyone around her. If she was my sister I'd give her a slap round the face and tell her to sort her fucking life out, but she's not and her sister can't do that but I can't tell you why because there's this twist, see, they say so in all the marketing. I kinda wanna ruin it because fuck marketing, right? But I'll control myself.

So yeah, it's about this girl and her life and relationship with her family because her sister's not there any more and her brother's not there any more and that's the big question isn't it - Where the fuck are they? And you learn all about her life and how much it sucks to be a whiny little bitch but then you kinda realise she's got pretty good reasons to be such a whiny little bitch so you stick with it because she is probably the most interesting whiny little bitch you've ever read about.

Then there's this massive bellend that rocks up called Harlow, she's like a proper spoilt brat that makes this whiny chick look like an actual decent human being by contrast. So that was clever writing, I liked that. It made me want to get a friend who can't say a sentence without at least four expletives in it because then that would make me look pretty fucking refined by contrast.


Anyway, back to the story, which I can't tell you more about, because TWISTS AND STUFF so I'll talk about the writing instead. This chick writes in stream of conciousness style and you're kinda like, 'What the fuck, it was Christmas a minute ago, why is it fucking October again now? Wait, go back to that other bit! Oh, you're gonna circle back to that bit AFTER you've got me interested in something else now, are you? You tricksy fucking minx, you.' 
It's super clever because my ADHD barely kicked in at all when I was reading this which means it must be really good.

Verdict: Must read.

No comments:

Post a Comment