We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Karen Joy Fowler

Rosemary doesn’t talk much. She creeps people out. Her mother is a shadow of who she used to be, she doesn’t deal directly with her father. Her brother is wanted by the FBI. Her sister is gone.

Starting her 5th year in college, she tells us her story, slightly out of order.

Eventually, we get to the crux-- her sister Fern, the missing one, was a chimpanzee. They were raised together as sisters, part of a grand experiment, and then when Rosemary was 5, Fern was sent away to a farm and they never saw her or really spoke of her again.

Rosemary had a hard time in school, being a monkey girl, because being raised with a chimp made her have many chimp-like behaviors. She’s falls into the uncanny valley. She’s human, but something about her is… off.

The plot question is, why did Fern have to leave? But the main question of the book is, what are the ramifications of Fern being part of the family in the first place, and how the family (and the public) reacts to her leaving. And how Fern reacts to being taken away.

One thing they struggle with is that no one understood or acknowledged the family’s grief. They didn’t lose a pet, they lost a child. Rosemary lost her twin. The ethics of the study, of what happened, and why are explored through Rosemary’s lens. She was 5 when Fern left, her picture is incomplete.

It’s fascinating and moving as Rosemary tries to parse what happened and why and how that affected everything after, if it affected anything after.

I loved this book. I think Fowler really captured Rosemary as a college student and the whys and hows of how she looked at her own story.

But really, just, so much love. (Also it’s not a huge downer. It could have easily been a major sobfest. But it wasn’t. So glad Fowler didn’t go there.)

There's a reason this is an Outstanding Book for the College Bound!

Book Provided by... my local library

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Disenchantments

The Disenchantments Nina LaCour

After graduation, Colby’s going on tour with Bev’s band, and then Colby and Bev are going to bum around Europe for a year. They’ve been planning this trip for years. But half-way through the tour, Bev drops the bomb that she’s going to college, not Europe, and Colby’s realizing that he doesn’t know his best friend at all.

Man, did I love this book. I loved Colby and his voice. I loved that Bev’s band was really, really bad. I loved their complicated and changing relationship, and that they’ve known each other forever and how that colors everything. I loved the other girls in Bev’s band (and man, I wished Colby would have woken up and realized that Meg was clearly awesome.) I loved the relationship between Meg and her sister Alexa (both in the band). I loved how it was about art and friendship and family.

AND JASPER. I loved Colby for thinking of Jasper-- this random character from early in the book. How Colby treats Jasper makes him my favorite. I loved Jasper.

So, yeah, I loved this book.

Book Provided by... my local library

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Verily, A New Hope

William Shakespeare's Star Wars Ian Doescher, George Lucas, and William Shakespeare.

So, this is pretty much what you’d expect, but a bit better. It’s A New Hope (aka, Star Wars #1) retold in the style of Shakespeare. I say “in the style of” because it does more that retell the story in iambic pentameter-- there’s a chorus that explains some of the action and sets the scene, as well as long soliloquies, really translating the story into how it would be told as an Elizabethan drama. Even the illustrations show how the staging would work in Elizabethan times.

There are several in-jokes for those who know their Shakespeare and their Star Wars. The text is full of such allusions as ”Friends, rebels, starfighters, lend me your ears…” and while the chorus refuses to say if Han shoots first, Jabba the Hutt *does* show up, as does Biggs Darklighter and Luke making plans to hang out after the battle-- so Doescher is working from the rerelease instead of the original. (Sorry, is my nerd showing?)

Overall, it was very fun, and well done. I'm looking forward to looking at William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back, which comes out next month. The Jedi Doth Return will be out this summer.

Book Provided by... my local library

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Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York Deborah Blum.

You guys are so lucky you haven’t been within earshot of me when I was reading this book. SO GOOD.

Medicine, murder, politics, and detective work combine to make for fascinating reading. Anyone familiar with crime drama knows you have to talk to the Medical Examiner to find out what happened. But in the beginning of the 20th century, that wasn’t the case. In New York, a few intrepid men developed the field of forensic medicine to help detect cause of death in the morgue. The growing field made it so poison was no longer an easy murder to get away with, as police could then say for sure that someone had been poisoned, and with what, which made tracking down the murderer that much easier.

But this is also Prohibition. We think of bathtub gin and homemade stills, but most of the alcohol on the streets was denatured industrial alcohol, stolen and then resold. In an effort to curb illegal drinking, the government kept demanding that more and more poisons be added to the alcohol. The result didn’t stop people from drinking, but it killed a lot of them. You can read more about it here. They also made an episode of American Experience on PBS about it.

(As that article is also written by Blum, it also gives a good taste of the book.)

And oh! The politics. Tamany Hall was NOT happy about the new medical examiner system and the office was often battling for basic funding and resources.

Blum weaves all these tales together to tell a gruesome and fascinating story about the development of a scientific field that now seems commonplace, a time in history we largely romanticize despite the body count, and well, poisoner and murder! Blum has a gift for story-telling and detail that draws you in (she also has an eye for the gruesome-- the wet chemistry involved wasn't always pretty.)

Excellent reading and a book that made the Outstanding Books for the College bound list!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.