WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES

Karen Joy Fowler (THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB) casts a clear-eyed look at the traumatic results of an innocent, if misguided, undertaking. In a time when cross-species fostering is encouraged to chart the effects on both animal and human children, the Cooke family adopts a baby chimpanzee, intended to grow up alongside their children. Orlagh Cassidy makes it clear that human siblings Rosemary and Lowell consider the chimp, Fern, their sister, not just a medical experiment. Cassidy delivers the complex sibling rivalry between Fern and Rosemary with genuine understanding. Later, as Rosemary uncovers repressed memories, particularly about Fern, who disappeared when Rosemary was 5, the causes of their mother’s subsequent depression and their father’s alcoholism, as well as Lowell’s animal rights activism, become clear. Cassidy’s performance offers an electric combination of understatement and highly charged emotions. Powerful listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2013]