We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

If you decide to read this book (and I recommend it), I suggest you not read any book reviews or press about it, at least until you are just over 1/4 of the way in so as not to hear the main spoiler. I chose the book because our book club is discussing it, so I didn't read anything about it before digging in.

Having just finished it, I heard the NPR interview with the author, read the NYT review (written by Barbara Kingsolver) and read the Q & A on Fowler's website which all reveal the surprise.

This is the most interesting book I have read so far this year (besides Cloud Atlas) and will provide for very lively book club discussion. I think I connected immediately with the narrator when she told part of the story from her 5-year-old perspective. First of all, I really enjoy writing that can get at the heart of the thinking process of young children*. But Rosemary loves to talk, and I know she is not alone in that.

"Fair warning, as it turned out - kindergarten is all about learning which parts of you are welcome at school and which are not. In kindergarten, to give you one example out of many, you are expected to spend much, much more of the day being quiet than talking, even if what you have to say is more interesting to everyone than anything your teacher is saying." - p. 26

*That's why I really like the commericals on tv these days of the guy talking to the group of children. Who else but a kid would think of taping a cheetah to the back of their grandma to make her faster?