(Subdue) Emotionally Weird, by Kate Atkinson (2.5 stars)

[KateNZ]

Effie is stuck on a remote Scottish island with her mother Nora, in the gradually disintegrating family holiday home. To while away the time, they tell each other stories: Effie of her time as a student (if not precisely studying) at Dundee University and the cast of eccentric characters she meets at the university; Nora, much more sparingly, about her recent family history.

This is Kate Atkinson's venture into metafiction, and I totally wasn't in the mood for it. It swung between wonderful and completely alienating - but mostly well and truly in the latter space for me.

The wonderful aspect is Atkinson's wry observational humour: there were some brilliant lines throughout the novel. I think the student life stories would ring amusing bells for many of us. And I appreciated what she was trying to do with writing about storytelling: confabulation, Nora's interjections on what makes a good story, poking fun at the complete ridiculousness of some academic discourse, blurring the lines between reality and fiction until you have no idea which is which, but come to the conclusion it doesn't matter.

And yet it dragged. And dragged. And dragged.

I get that she wanted to keep the reader guessing about the storyline that you really care about (Nora's story) so the meandering style of the rest of it is deliberate and provocative. But I so didn't care. All I wanted from about a third of the way through was to finish it. And picking it up to get further towards finishing it was such an effort. The observations, anecdotes and all-round cleverness of the thing just weren't enough to make me want to actually read it.

[Joanne]

Well good job finishing it Kate! I would have quite a week ago-LoL

[KateNZ]

My fingers were itching near the 'swap' button so many times, lol. I'm actually glad I finished it, weirdly, but I wish I'd cared more about reading it