We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Published 2014 · 336 pages · 80,209 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, Literary Fiction
How hard is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves to read?
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Fowler writes in accessible, conversational prose with the distinctive voice of Rosemary, whose observations mix wit with underlying grief. The vocabulary is straightforward but the narrator's intelligence shapes everything she describes.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Sentences are often quick and associative, building through Rosemary's habit of circling around what she's not ready to say. Fowler's prose has the rhythm of someone talking to delay the revelation she's approaching.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- The novel explores family, identity, and what we owe those closest to us through Rosemary, whose childhood with her sister Fern shaped everything she became. The central revelation about Fern transforms the reader's understanding of what the family experienced and lost.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- 1970s childhood, contemporary college life, and the textures of a fractured family layer through the narrative. Fowler builds her portrait through accumulated attention to memories, silences, and the things Rosemary has spent years not thinking about.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Rosemary deliberately starts in the middle, delaying the revelation that reframes everything. The reader must trust the narrator while understanding that her circling is both defense and strategy.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- Fern becomes symbolic of what families sacrifice without understanding the cost. The childhood experiments become symbolic of how love can justify damage. Memory becomes symbolic of what we protect and distort.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Fowler maintains wry distance through Rosemary's voice while building toward devastating recognition. The novel is funny about a family that is also tragic.
- Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
- The family's past is revealed; what it means for the future remains open. Fowler offers the understanding that cannot undo what happened.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- The middle-start narrative with strategic revelations is moderately demanding. The structure rewards attention to how Rosemary controls what the reader learns and when.
How We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is regarded
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves holds a literary regard score of 71 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.