false 28942 18 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 <i>Emotionally Weird</i> 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.<p> 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 <I>Ulysses</I> and <I>Finnegans Wake</I>. 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 <I>Alice in Wonderland</I>, 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. <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> As <I>Emotionally Weird</I> 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. <I>--Regina Marler</I> 510058 2000 Emotionally Weird total:588|5:7|4:2|3:6|2:3|1:1| 588 1963 905 78 3 2 false false Fri Apr 11 09:48:38 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 11 18:03:00 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jun 14 17:58:36 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 14 17:59:28 -0700 2007 Emotionally Weird fullfilled the promise of Behind the Scenes at the Museum much better than Human Croquet did. As usual, Atkinson has a unique touch, and this story, much of which revolves around a bunch of college students in a creative writing class, seems tailor-made for English major-me. I ad...more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 03:27:49 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 03:32:20 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Feb 12 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jun 22 18:46:44 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 19:02:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Dec 18 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 14 15:26:26 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 18 03:27:13 -0800 2008 It was in many ways the best and worst of Atkinson's style - once again you are on some sort of magical realism journey, and because she is so talented at weaving a hillarious narrative I just went along w...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 12 17:27:55 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 21 17:14:24 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Oct 17 17:04:22 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 20 20:11:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 13 09:43:42 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 13 09:57:06 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Mon Apr 02 09:47:52 -0700 2007 Mon Apr 02 09:47:52 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Tue Apr 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 09:30:06 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 14 06:30:12 -0700 2009
Having now read all of Atkinson's pre-Jackson Brodie novels, I'm feeling very conflicted. She's a great writer no matter wh...more...]]> 1 0 false false Sat Oct 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 07:04:50 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 07:16:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jun 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 28 12:16:11 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 11:39:32 -0700 2009 Emotionally Weird sees Atkinson writing with her tongue stuck firmly in cheek. Metafiction at its most humorous, the book pokes fun at academia and amateur writers and the conventions of Atkinson's usual genre, the detective/mystery story, and there are p...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun May 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 19 07:59:24 -0700 2007 Mon May 11 08:48:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 28 07:01:18 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 10 17:55:02 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Sep 23 22:56:14 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 16 09:03:52 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 23 22:55:45 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 13 14:36:59 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 13 14:38:59 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat May 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 16:45:39 -0700 2009 Sat May 30 15:46:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 02 21:17:41 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 02 21:17:56 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Sep 19 12:49:03 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 19 12:49:54 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Sat Nov 29 20:24:15 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 29 20:24:37 -0800 2008