But it's Rosemary's problems as a young adult – informed by her "simian" past – that shape the narrative. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves resonates with Rosemary's grief for her missing alter ego and sister, and for the adored Lowell, who communicates with the family only through the occasional cryptic postcard. The girls' imposed "twin‑sisterhood" was part of an animal-human behaviour experiment conducted for five years by their psychologist father, before being abruptly terminated. There's no way of reviewing this novel without disclosing the shattered Cooke family's not-so-secret secret, deftly held back until page 77: that Rosemary's missing sister, Fern, was a chimpanzee. But "weird on stilts" lies just over the horizon. In time, she will be left with only a baffling palimpsest of sibling memories, recounted through caustic, guilt-tinged flashbacks. More silence follows and little motormouth Rosemary, recognising a double taboo when she sees one, packs away her enthusiastically learned vocabulary and becomes an almost silent child. When he commits a series of crimes in the name of animal rights and becomes a fugitive from the FBI, a second hole is blasted in the already shaken family. Soon afterwards, Rosemary's stormy teenage brother Lowell absconds, also without discussion, leaving her bereft again.
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