by Kate Atkinson
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Product Description
A thoroughly original and hilarious novel about mothers, daughters, and love, by the author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum.
On a weather-beaten island off the coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large, mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear--like who her real father was. Effie tells various versions of her life at college, where in fact she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom Klingons are as real as Spaniards and Germans.
But as mother and daughter spin their tales, strange things are happening around them. Is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?
In a brilliant comic narrative which explores the nonsensical power of language and meaning, Kate Atkinson has created another magical masterpiece.
Amazon.com Review
Readers who survive the first 20 pages of this dense and playful novel, with its three different openings, constant jokes, and crowded cast of characters, will find themselves rewarded with a leisurely postmodern romp through the student ferment and bodily indulgences of the early 1970s. Although the publisher has called Emotionally Weird a comic novel, it is essentially unclassifiable, both further-reaching and less "meaningful" than it first appears. Kate Atkinson's book begins with chapter 1 of a bad murder mystery being written by Effie Andrews for a creative-writing course at the University of Dundee in 1972. But the action soon shifts to a wintry island in the Hebrides, where Effie is trying to elicit the story of her parentage from her single mother, Nora, while spinning a humorous first-person narrative of her college life. Only near the end of the book does she finally wrench the story from her mother: Effie's bizarre origins; the identity of her father; and the whole unlikely tale of her mother's family. Like a Borgesian labyrinth, with other stories thrown in, including a laughably convenient introduction of magic realism, it is impossible to know what to take seriously--or "jocoseriously," to paraphrase another of Atkinson's influences: the Joyce of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. In her third novel, much of Atkinson's humor is incidental, even parenthetical. (We are told in passing, for example, that Effie's dissertation is called "Henry James: Man or Maze?") She is at her best when introducing her eccentric characters, such as the elderly Professor Cousins, who is sometimes lucid, sometimes not. "As with anyone in the department," Effie explains, "it wasn't always easy to distinguish between the two states. The university's strict laws of tenure dictated that he had to be dead at least three months before he could be removed from behind his desk." Professor Cousins, like the author, enjoys word games along the order of those in Alice in Wonderland, and Atkinson's use of Scottish idiom comes to function as a sort of word game. She also brings in a few killjoys (a militant feminist, a militant Christian, a literary theorist) to complicate an already loopy narrative and to spike the punch. Janice smelt of piety and coal tar soap. She had recently become a Christian, a neophyte of a student Christian fellowship whose members roamed the corridors of Airlie, Belmont and Chalmers Halls looking for likely converts (the afraid, the alone, the abandoned) and those who needed to use the Bible to fill in the spaces where their personalities should have been. As Emotionally Weird develops, Atkinson relies more and more on the postmodern gag of characters commenting on the unfolding action. There is no telling how she finally draws these disparate threads onto a single spool, but in the end, even the slightest subplots are neatly tied up and the most transient characters accounted for. --Regina Marler
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A slog , 2008-09-18
Based on my love for another Kate Atkinson novel, Case Histories, I thought Emotionally Weird would be a good read. To my disappointment, I ended up having to force myself through the book, hoping that at some point I would begin to like at least one of the characters in the novel. Instead, every character came off as slightly repulsive and one-dimensional, and I never gained an appreciation or sympathy for any of them. About halfway through the book, I began to feel like I was stuck in a Groundhog's Day scenerio, where every chapter seemed to repeat slightly modified descriptions of characters' weird clothing, drug-filled dorm room conversations revolving around Star Trek quotes, and excerpts from lame papers/novels being written by the students or their professors. My advice is to skip this one and try some of Kate Atkinson's other books instead.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Great fun!, 2008-07-23
Well, I made it through the first 20 pages and found myself completely rewarded by this charming and very, very funny book. Just enjoy it, appreciate the humor and don't take it too seriously!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Charming and Funny, 2007-06-03
I completely enjoyed Emotionally Weird. I think I giggled from start to finish. The major part of the book is a very funny sendup of university life, as applicable now as in the 70s, just replace Klingons with Xbox, or other games. All the professors are skewered as well, and everyone, it seems, is a writer (doesn't it seem that way, though?), except for the vampiric Terri, who proves to have one, and only one, soft spot. Excellent characterizations, by the way, so it's not just a comic novel. The "main" story, which actually occupies only a small part of the novel, of the girl and her mother on the island, is my least favorite part, although it serves to tie things together. I'd have been happy with just the college life parts, and I think the author realized this, as she keeps the rest of the stories to a minimum. Read this and giggle.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A modern Faulkner?, 2007-04-08
This book is rather unconventional. While many others have each chapter be a different story with all the stories usually converging in the end, Ms. Atkinson takes 4+ stories and cuts and pastes them together in each chapter. Around 200 pages I almost quit reading as I was getting frustrated as I couldn't figure out what was real and what was just a story. After finishing the book I'm still not so sure if I know what was real. The obsession about the main charachters parentage is the main theme of this book and I'm pretty sure the conclusions are actually real and not a story the mother and daughter make up. I wish you all the best in reading this. I've never been a great appreciator of modern art and I suppose this is "modern literature."
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Weird and funny, 2005-02-27
I had a hard time getting into this book - too many characters introduced all at once and so briefly that I couldn't keep them straight. I'm glad I stuck with it though because about halfway through, I got drawn into the story and the strange and quirkly happenings. Atkinson is a really funny writer and I laughed outloud several times throughout the book. Although I really enjoyed the second half of the book, I was disappointed in the ending - well not the ending itself but the way the last chapter gives you all the answers to everything instead of giving more hints along the way so the reader could figure it out.
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