Wednesday, July 24 - Karen Joy Fowler

Tonight on Bibliocracy Radio, 8 PM on KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California:  KAREN JOY FOWLER.  My guest tonight is the author of a bestselling first novel which in its embrace of feminist politics, genre, idiom, challenged and delighted, inviting in so many readers to her worldview and making overnight longtime fans of the author of Sarah Canary.  That first book by Karen Joy Fowler, published in 1991 arrived after publication of science fiction and other short stories, and before her big-time book, The Jane Austen Book Club, with her award-winning story “What I Didn’t See” in there, just to make things interesting. In her latest novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, we are offered yet another wrty, human, provocative invitation to learn what really happened, reconsider the facts, read the version as told by the protagonist of another story of secrets revealed, toward understanding the meta-power of powerful storytelling.  All of that on top of the delicious details of the story itself, this one about two "sisters" with a unique and enduring variety of sibling rivalry as it is constructed, unintentionally by their scientist father. This is a seriously funny book, entertainingly serious social criticism, thoughtfully and politically provocative family story.  Need more convincing? See my recent review at OC Bookly: 
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2013/06/karen_joy_fowler.php