We are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Fowler's novel is about your typical family, unless you find raising a chimp with your children to be atypical.  Rose, our beguiling heroine, becomes a sister to Fern, a newborn chimp. Rose's parents accepted Fern into the family when both were infants.  Rose's father is a psychologist conducting a study to learn whether chimps can learn language skills.  Lowell, Rose's older, wiser & more militant brother asks "Why does she have to learn our language?  Why can't we learn hers?"  Both Rose & Lowell become devoted to Fern.  Both learn to communicate in simpatico with Fern.  As the daughter of a psycholgist, Rose determines that "the thing being studied is rarely the thing being studied."  Fowler is a skillful writer.  "Completely"is vastly entertaining and exasperating.  Rose likes to tell her story from the middle, and skip the beginning.  We learn that as the infernal talking "monkey girl," Rose is friendless until her college years.  Her college life begins with her arrest although she is an innocent bystander in a cafeteria melee.  The boundaries between animal & human behaviors are blurred.  Memories and their accuracies are susceptible to change.  Definitely, life with Fern is astonishing.  But, when Fern is removed from the home, for disputable reasons, the fallout proves devastating.  As an animal advocate, Fowler is preaching to the choir.  As a storyteller, Fowler brought her A game, completely.