Kate Atkinson's Novel Emotionally Weird

My first review of the year was for Kate Atkinson's debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which inspired me to read more of my favorite authors' back catalogues. It seems fitting to end the year with a review of Atkinson's third novel, 'Emotionally Weird,' which was first published in 2000 and tells the story of Euphemia Stuart-Murray and her mother Nora, who live on a remote Scottish island.

Effie is telling Nora about her life as a student in Dundee, where she lives with her Star Trek-obsessed boyfriend Bob. Effie, on the other hand, has concerns about her family history, and what she really wants is for Nora to reveal who her biological father is.

Atkinson's sense of fun has always come through in her work, but 'Emotionally Weird' is the first of her books that can be described as a comic novel. The depiction of life at the University of Dundee in the early 1970s supposedly bears little resemblance to the Scottish higher education institution at the time, but the eccentric characters and detailed scene-setting suggest Atkinson has a keen eye for the foibles of human behavior in a similar environment, particularly when it comes to student politics and creative writing seminars.

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The structure is more postmodern and experimental than I expected, with extracts from Effie's detective novel written during her studies and frequent interruptions from Nora while Effie is narrating her version of events, using a variety of typefaces to differentiate between each strand. However, Atkinson is self-aware enough to recognize the obvious pitfalls of such techniques and uses meta-storytelling to parody different genres and make fun of pretentious literary criticism and academia without allowing the story to become overwhelmed by its own complexity.

The real strength of 'Emotionally Weird,' as with pretty much any comic novel, lies in the strange and wonderful cast of characters, while the plot, such as it is, does run out of steam towards the end, with perhaps a few too many knowing winks aimed at the reader. This, however, does not detract from what is otherwise a cleverly constructed and frequently very funny book, and I am now eagerly anticipating Atkinson's new novel 'Transcription,' which is due out in the UK in September.












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