We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

My fist read from the Booker Prize Shortlist 2014 and it's off to a brilliant start. Firstly, it's really difficult to talk about this book without giving away the reveal. Though it's a relatively early one (page 70 odd) the narrator is depending on her reader "going in blind" so to speak. She comes from a research family; call it measuring a reaction to an unseen circumstance. I'd hate to spoil her data collection...

The book is narrated by Rosemary who states early on that starting in the middle of the story is as good a place as any; something that people used to tell her as an incessantly talkative child. She starts with college, switches to childhood and works back to the middle in the end. It's all about her family, or at least what's left of it. She's barely on speaking terms with her parents (Alcoholic psychologist father, depressive post-breakdown mother). Her revered brother simply walked out 10 years ago and never returned and her sister Fern, about whom nobody will speak, was whisked off never to be seen again one night when Rosie was 5 and was bundled off to her Grandparents' for a few weeks.

Rosie's story comes in chunks with little chronology, but much of the middle takes place in 1996 during her unusually long undergraduate education at a California college. The solitary student, so different from her talkative early years, is arrested in an uncharacteristic blip when a police officer mistakes her for a hysterical student. The hysterical student in question is Harlow, also arrested, who becomes one of the first long term friends of Rosemary's life- a whirlwind of bad decisions, impulses and petty crime, Harlow introduces her new friend to narcotics and they get to be on first name terms with the campus police. Add to that a paranoid apartment block manager, a purloined antique marionette and a 'nice but puts up with a lot' flatmate, and that's about all the people in Rosemary's life.

Though time is fragmented and split into chunks, the narrative heaves throughout with Rosemary's grief for her absent sister, and for the much loved Lowell who is involved with domestic terrorist activities with the Animal Liberation Front. He communicates with the family rarely and only by anonymous, cryptic postcards. Rosemary struggles her whole life to fit in, because her whole character has been shaped and reflected in her lost sister. She has literally lost a half of herself.

There's really complex, overlapping themes of identity and grief in this book, and arguments about nature versus nurture and learned behaviour that are explored in ways that are alternately really funny, and incredibly touching. She also speaks at length about the slippery nature of memory and how easy it is to misremember, to replace recollections with photos or stories and how easy it is to just forget or block things out. I think the uncertainty of some of Rosemary's recollections was really well crafted and played on some of the thoughts and wonderings that many readers must have- everybody has memories that they think they remember that could realistically be inventions, scenes from forgotten films or a preferred version of events that have just sort of taped over the real events. I loved Rosemary as a character; I thought her anger and confusion at the state of her family was so believable, she was intelligent, sarcastic and resigned to her "uncanny valley" weirdness.

In less skilful hands, this novel could get a bit daft and seem unlikely, impossible even. The contrast between the comedy capers and the themes explored could have become an obstacle to a lesser writer. As it is, Fowler manages to tackle the absurd and the profound with grace and with emotion. The book raises questions about familial loyalty, animal rights, parental deceit, guilt, self-delusion and self-doubt and even the theme of ownership all trussed up in the more universally relatable dysfunctional family package. A really engrossing, thought provoking book that is an absolute masterpiece in misdirection and playing with the readers' perceptions. Brilliant storytelling, an unforgettable narrator an unforgettable family.

The Collector of Lost Things, by Jeremy Page

It is 1850; egg expert and nature fan Mr. Eliot Saxby has been hired by some important acquaintances with more money than sense to journey out on a merchant ship to the Arctic. The vessel and its crew make regular trips to the Arctic Circle to hunt and trade with Esquimaux populations, but the purpose of Mr. Saxby's passage is to collect eggs, evidence and natural artefacts (if possible) from a possibly rare, possibly extinct bird; the Great Auk. Mr Saxby considers himself the lone voice of morality and reason on the boat, populated with mercenary men driven by profit only and with little regard for animal welfare or ecology. The journey soon becomes a horrific slaughter fest, as the crew begin their harvest, violently slaughtering seals, walruses, and whales for their valuable parts.

The only other passengers are a mysterious woman named Clara that Eliot finds arrestingly familiar, and her possessive, hunter cousin who wants to bag himself some Arctic game. Cooped up in the ship for weeks with no escape, and with such conflicting interests, it is not long before tensions begin to emerge between Eliot, his fellow passengers and the ship's crew, with potentially deadly consequences.

I bought this book on a whim, drawn to the museumish ephemera cover. The narrative began promisingly enough- being a bit of a twitcher myself, I was immediately interested in the ornithology themes of the book and a bird based Arctic thriller seemed like something not done before. I love Norfolk too, so bonus points for all the marshy broadland descriptions. I was expecting a gothic(ish), atmospheric thriller, kind of like the end of Frankenstein- icy claustrophobia, tension and ravaged consciences. I agree entirely with Eliot's rage at the careless, entitled way that mankind stomps around the Earth, randomly grabbing and what will make them money and smashing what won't- and the story of the Great Auk is a sad and regrettable one that would make brilliant fiction...but this book was a bit of a frosty let down.

I don't mind the violence described as the hunts get underway. Some of the descriptions are very grim and full of gore, but then so is hunting, so par for the course really. The desolate icescapes of the Arctic region were also competently written, though I didn't find them particularly evocative or arresting. It set the scene well enough, but I never felt like the Arctic inspired any sense of awe, which is usually the case with such dramatic landscapes. I kept waiting for the tragedy or for the drama of the ice to unfold, but none came.

I feel this book perhaps focused on the wrong thing. The mysterious identity of Clara, evidently supposed to be so much of a mystery, was easy to guess at and it felt like this was intended to be some shocking reveal or twist, throwing Eliot's entire character into question. The painful flashbacks that he suffers, transporting him back to the stately home in Suffolk get a little dull when the reader has already guessed the connection. I didn't feel like Clara added much to the story at all, she didn't really manage to pull of the mysterious haunted heroine role, and I found myself bored and exasperated by her much of the time. The same can be said for Eliot really. I understand that he was supposed to be a sensitive, tortured soul, crippled by guilt and on a mission to right his wrongs, but he ended up coming across as simpering and dull, a case of mistaken identity eked out into something interesting.

In all, a promising set of ideas in a unique and appealing location, but lacking any really interesting characters and with a tacked on twist that isn't sufficiently twisty, nor particularly shocking. I would have liked Eliot's moral code to have been the thing to have driven him out of his mind and into a more advanced state of psychological decline, rather than an almost familiar girl driving him just mad enough to have strange dreams and get a bit shouty, which is what happens. It has made me want to read Frankenstein again though.