We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

236 Pages·2016·1.3 MB·English

by  Karen Joy Fowler

ALSO BY
Karen Joy Fowler
NOVELS
Wit’s End
The Jane Austen Book Club
Sister Noon
The Sweetheart Season
Sarah Canary
STORIES
What I Didn’t See
Black Glass
Artificial Things

A MARIAN WOOD BOOK
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com Copyright © 2013 by Karen Joy Fowler All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate
in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada The passages from Franz Kafka’s “A Report for an Academy” are quoted from a translation
prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University), Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.
The poem by Issa is quoted from a translation that appeared on Yoshi Mikami’s Issa’s Haiku home page. Lyrics are quoted from “The
Hukilau Song” by Jack Owens, and “Love Potion No. 9” by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fowler, Karen Joy.
We are all completely beside ourselves / Karen Joy Fowler.
p. cm.
“A Marian Wood book.”
ISBN 978-1-10159568-8
1. Families—Fiction. 2. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 3. Human-animal relationships—Fiction. 4. Life change events—Fiction.
5. Domestic fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS35556.O844W4 2013 2013000988
813'.54—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
IN MEMORY OF
the wonderful Wendy Weil,
champion of books, animals,
and, in both categories, me
Contents
Also by Karen Joy Fowler
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Four
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Five
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Six
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven

Acknowledgments
. . . Your experience as apes, gentlemen—to the extent that you have something of
that sort behind you—cannot be more distant from you than mine is from me. But it
tickles at the heels of everyone who walks here on earth, the small chimpanzee as well
as the great Achilles.
—FRANZ KAFKA, “A Report for an Academy”