’We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’ by Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood/Putnam. In fact, just as most of us have decided that we should probably stop torturing chimps to death in the name of science, an outrageous community of simian novels has been congregating in the branches of the library, from the “autobiography” of Tarzan’s sidekick, “ Me Cheeta,” by James Lever, to “ The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore,” by Benjamin Hale.

Her new novel, for instance, involves an ordinary Midwestern family: two parents and three children.Īnd why not? If Gregor Samsa can turn into a cockroach and Edward Albee can ask, “ Who is Sylvia?”, a chimp for a sibling doesn’t seem so far down the evolutionary tree. Award, a prize “for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender.” In 1991, she co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Her stories have won the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. But aside from that domesticated crowd-pleaser, Fowler is also the author of genre-blending works of historical fiction and fantasy. You know Karen Joy Fowler, though probably only for her least representative novel - that charming bestseller “The Jane Austen Book Club.” It landed with perfectly calibrated Janite wit in 2004 during a wave of renewed enthusiasm for Austen and book clubs.

We re all completely beside ourselves