We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

This is the story of an American family....an ordinary family in every way but one...but I won't say how the family is different and be a spoiler. (Although I knew when I started the book.)

Here is a quote from the author of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini:

"I thought this was a gripping, big-hearted book . . . through the tender voice of her protagonist, Fowler has a lot to say about family, memory, language, science, and indeed the question of what constitutes a human being."

The Cooke family: Mom and Dad, brother Lowell  and sisters Fern and the narrator, Rosemary form this family that is broken up and separated when Rosemary is just five years old.  Her journey is told in this gripping story...a book I could not put down. It's full of truths about humans, our connections to animals, about humanity in general.

Read it. You will fall in love with Fern and even Lowell, once you understand where his anger is coming from.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

At the start, I like this book, but after reading half of it, I was sick of it. The characters did not engage me particularly. And I was troubled that her conflict between family and career ended up taking a back seat.  (Maybe that was the idea?)

I will say that I liked the general theme - marriage as a difficult institution.  The relationship between Georgie McCool (yes, that name pissed me off from the beginning, but look at the author's name!) and Neal is challenging but no probably no more challenging than the "typical" marriage.  Life has ups and downs and living with another human being is not always easy.  There was no abuse, or infidelity

Rowell uses a very clever device - the landline - in a sci fi kind of way when she "talks" to her husband and children in Omaha during the Christmas vacation. She has stayed behind while he takes their two girls to Omaha to visit his mother for Christmas.  Georgie stays behind to write scripts for the TV show that she and her partner, Seth, have just had accepted by a big TV producer, This is their BIG BREAK finally, and she can't risk taking off for Omaha when their deadline looms near.

Seth and Georgie are like brother and sister. They have been writing partners for years and know each other better than anyone else. In some ways, she's closer to Seth than to Neal. But Neal is not jealous; maybe that bothers her!

In any event, she tries over and over to talk to Neal in Omaha and eventually reaches him on the landline in her childhood room, but the Neal she is talking to is the one she was dating about 20 years ago. This is an interesting technique the author uses to fill us in on their relationship history, courtship and engagement, and also offers insight into how and why Georgie fell in love with Neal and her inner conflict over the issues in their lives.

Anyway, in the end, it was not one of my favorites, but it was a fast and easy read.

The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter

Loved Beautiful Ruins  so picked this up and was not disappointed. It's a very different book from Beautiful Ruins. Much funnier and sarcastic and cynical.

This novel tells a story of a small town financial journalist who has quit his job and is on the verge of bankruptcy. His marriage is failing (he suspects his wife is fooling around with an old flame) and he is logging into her social media accounts to spy on her.  He had this idea to develop a website, poetfolio.com, that combines free verse with financial journalism. The book starts off with some free verse and every chapter begins that way. Some entire chapters are in free verse. A very interesting concept.
Walter is a very talented and funny author. I found myself marveling at his imagery, metaphors and clever writing. 
The story started to wear on me, however, and I did figure out how it would end.
But I will continue to explore Walters' books. He is a real talent.