I'm going to preface this review by saying that, even after successfully making it all the way through this book, I still don't understand the abundance of 4 and 5 star reviews for this book.

Beside Myself is described as a "literary thriller", literary being shorthand for descriptive (but not quite prose) writing, and thriller.... I'm not sure. The book definitely ramps up toward the end, but it isn't an edge-of-your-seat what-will-happen-next thriller. By the middle I was invested enough to want to know Hellie's fate, but that was about it.

Hellie is Helen. Except she's not, she's Ellie. Helen and Ellie are six year old twins who swap places, a 'prank' of sorts, it's really Helen's idea, but suddenly Ellie begins to enjoy the privileges her twin's life affords her and refuses to finish the game and swap back. Helen is pushed into the "Ellie" box, where she is expected to be less than smart, to have some issues, which only makes it harder for people to listen when she insists that she isn't Ellie, she's Helen. It's an interesting idea for a book, and the idea itself deserves the four and five stars, but other than that it falls short.

I don't like Helen, and as much as she is actually a victim in her story, I couldn't really root for her. Normally unlikeable characters are my thing, but her treatment of Ellie from childhood just couldn't make me like her. It's evident to me that a lot of Ellie's troubles are actually from Helen's treatment of her. Helen constantly belittles her, makes fun of her, and bullies her alongside her friends. Why wouldn't Ellie want to be Helen? Helen's the golden child, the one who follows all the rules, the one who their (admittedly off-kilter) mother loves.

None of this was what prompted my below average review however. 

Reading this book made me annoyed, then frustrated, then angry. How half of this made it through the editing process I have no idea, and I can't find many other reviews that mention it. Beside Myself is written in chapters that alternate between the present and the past. Except that the present chapters are written in third-person past tense, and the past chapters are written in first-person present tense. It doesn't make sense story-telling wise. 

Then, halfway through the book, for no explicable reason, the past chapters switch to second-person present tense (from "I do this" to "You do this"). Needless to say, I was ripped out from my little reading cloud asking "Wait, what?" After some thought I could come up with a reason this might be done, namely to do with Helen's disconnect with her own identity, but if that's what it is it is never explained. I couldn't get past it.

The second thing that bothered me a little that other reviews touched on, was the multiple things characters are referred to. While the main story doesn't have a large cast of characters, each one is often referred to by multiple names. I didn't have trouble in following this, but other reviewers have apparently. Examples include: Helen referred to as Helen, Ellie, and Smudge. Ellie referred to as Ellie, Helen, Hellie (Hellie is a good identifier as it is the Helen version of Ellie), and their step-father being called Horace and Arkela. 

Onto the third (it wasn't until writing this review I realised how many problems I had with this book). As in my preface, the term "literary" here is used for descriptive. Evidently the author has never been told that you can have too much description. I actually quite like prose writing and descriptive writing myself, but the problem with Beside Myself is the needless description of everything in every moment, and the repetitiveness of this description. This description is actually problematic in one instance:

"There was a tray in front of her and a pair of chocolate-coloured hands manouvering it into position ... "There," said the nurse in a sing-song Nigerian accent"

There are problems with describing a person of colour as being "chocolate", not to mention the fact that it's an incredibly overused identifier, but Morgan then goes on to explicitly state that she was Nigerian. Most people, I would think, would be aware that Nigerians are PoC. 

My fourth and final issue with the book is similar, it is the repetitiveness of some descriptions. Nearly every scene that refers to some kind of sex act is described as "(someone) moving above (her, me, you)". There are probably a million ways to describe this, and while this works as a way to tell readers what is happening, it's dull and repetitive by the second or third time. 

Now, some more good words about this book.

While it isn't exactly a thriller it is actually an interesting look into some great themes including Identity, mental illness, suicide, and family. If that is something you are interested in it's probably worth giving this book a shot, despite my less than stellar review. Although I don't think Helen/Smudge's illness is explicitly stated it is clear that she suffers from manic and depressive episodes as well as hallucinations and self-identity problems, and Beside Myself provides an interesting insight into the mental goings on of a character who suffers from this. I would be interested to see the opinions and reviews of someone who may be able to relate to the Helen/Smudge character.

It is important to note though this book should carry some warnings, it does include scenes/mention of: mental illness, suicide, and rape.

Well, that's over.  From the front flap of the book:

Prompted to read a book translated into English from each of the world's 195 UN-recognized countries (plus Taiwan and one extra), Ann sought out classics, folktales, current favorites and commercial triumphs, novels, short stories, memoirs, and countless mixtures of all these things.

The world between two covers, the world to which Ann introduces us with affection and no small measure of wit, is a world rich in the kind of narratives that engage us passionately: we meet an irreverent junk food–obsessed heroine in Kuwait, an explorer from Togo who spent years among the Inuit in Greenland, and a former child circus performer of Roma background seeking sanctuary in Switzerland. 

I was excited to read this book because I was looking forward to hearing about Morgan's experiences sourcing native literature from each country and her thoughts about what she read.  After all, isn't that what the title and flap seem to be offering?

Unfortunately, that's not what I got.  What I got was a dissertation on reading globally, writing for a global audience and a whole lot of theorising about imperialism, racism, war and how they relate to writing and publishing.  The only time Morgan mentions her experiences with sourcing and reading literature from every UN recognized country at all in this book is when she's using them as citations to support the idea she's espousing at that moment.  As to her thoughts about what she read - they're almost non-existent until nearly the end when she discusses her feelings about the perceptions of non-Europeans/North Americans of the British and the Yanks.

I'd have given this book 1 star, but the book does have merit; it's thoughtful, insightful, and well-written.  If this is what you're looking for, definitely check out this book.  But this wasn't what I was looking for; I was looking for what was advertised on the packet and since I didn't get that my rating is lower than the book objectively deserves.

So whose story was I following, then?  Which reading of the world had produced the list of 195 sovereign states - with its single addition of Kosovo to the list of UN-recognised nations - that I was using as the basis for my project?  where did it come from, this strange register of country names, so ubiquitous that, in spite of all my research into the fraught question of nationhood, I had blithely taken as  universal yardstick?

 

I retraced my virtual steps.  [...] So categorical and universal did [the list] appear to be, that it was almost as though some independent, pan-global body had debated the issues and reached an official consensus, placing it on a par with such universal truths as death, or toast always landing butter-side-down.

 

And then in amongst the landslide of parroted and regurgitated information, [...], I found an innocuous-looking list of 'Independent States in the World' on the US government website. [...] The truth hit me: despite all my efforts to establish an objective list of countries at the start of the year, I had succumbed to that  most twenty-first century of maladies, data infecta. [...] I had been reading the American world all along.

 

Oh give me a damn break.  Because you used a list whose source came from an American government website all the foreign literature you've read so far (6 months worth according to the author) is now infected and somehow less foreign?  Less meaningful?  As an American I've always been aware of our influence to a degree, but I have to admit I had no idea that by just compiling a list of Independent nations we immediately voided the legitimacy of said nations.  Who knew that simply publishing a list was all you needed to own the world?  Impressive.

My sarcasm sounds less imperialistic and her dismay even sillier ("After the initial phase of fist-biting and forehead-slapping over my own stupidity subsided, I started to think about what to do."), when you read her solution to this "problem":

After a couple of sleepless nights, and a weekend in which not much was consumed other than my own fingernails as I sat squinting at a range of involved and contradictory articles about sovereignty around the world, the solution came to me.

 

[...] my new yardstick was to be UN recognition.

 

The result of this world changing decision?

[...] then shifting from an American to a global perspective could simply be a matter of bringing in Palestine to replace the only country on the list of 196 with no degree of UN recognition at any time in its history: Kosovo.

 

Wow.  Glad you got that sorted out and your conscience can rest easier knowing that your project was sanitised of the American world view by the simple expedient of swapping Kosovo for Palestine.  While I'm sure Palestinians are relieved at your  recognition, I'm guessing Kosovo is less than thrilled.

First world tempest in a tea-pot.

The postman got a break from me this week, but one of my locals and my library, did not.

Between my library system getting a few upgrades and my taking the time to dig around their website a bit more, I'm figuring out how to get more out of it than I have up until now. They have a user list function, so I've been creating a list of books as I come across interesting titles.  As you can see, it's working well so far.

My library haul includes Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.  This is going to be my Science Fiction read for Summer Book Bingo.  I dislike dystopian settings, but I dislike space and AI fiction more - and I love Fforde's other work so I'm totally willing to give this a go for the humour alone.

I also picked up a couple of titles I found in an article on LitHub that recommended books about books: A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan  and The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly.  Sitting next to The Book of Lost Books was Book by John Agard, which looked cute and short.

The library haul was rounded off with Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard  and Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini and Rebecca Paley  because I've seen so many good things said about both here on BookLikes.

Two of the three bookshop buys were impulses from shelf browsing; I had just read about The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe by Kelli Ann Morgan  mere hours before seeing it on the shelves, so that felt like karma.  The Clasp by Sloane Crosley looks funny and I've read her essays - they're hysterical.  The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman  because it's birds, science and look at that cover!

Total new books: 9

Total books read this week: 9

Total physical books on TBR: 227

I hope everyone has had or is having (depending on which side of the dateline you're on) a fabulous weekend!

Who am I again?  I’m Ellie.  No!  Maybe I’m Helen.  Are you all confused yet?  Well, don’t be.  Helen and Ellie are twins, although Ellie was painfully shy and Helen was ‘the boss’ of the two.  Ellie always followed along with what her sister wanted to do and obeyed everything she told her to do.  So, when Helen instructed Ellie to act like her to see if they could fool people, Ellie paid attention and actually got it right.  She got it so right that it began to be difficult even for Mom to tell them apart.  Now, Ellie kind of liked being in the place of Helen, the smart one and the popular one, and decided that’s whose identity she would keep … with devastating consequences for Helen.  After the girls are grown at the outset of the novel, one is mentally challenged, to say the least, and the other is in a coma.  Will you be able to tell which one is which?

At we read, we’re understanding things primarily from Helen’s perspective.  The chapters alternate between when Helen and Ellie were six years old to some twenty years later.  It begs the question of children being molded into the role of how they are labeled by parents; family; adult friends; and teachers.  For instance, if we are called ‘lazy’ or ‘clumsy’ when we are children, do we make those labels fit as we grow up?  Perhaps the extent to which Helen was changed, as a result of their identity switch, is a bit overdramatic but the concept for fictional purposes makes this a very gripping and interesting psychological thriller.  The author, Ann Morgan, does a great job of getting into the head of Helen and making us believe it is all possible.  Rating: 4 out of 5.