''Emotionally Weird'' is the third novel by

Kate Atkinson Kate Atkinson may refer to: * Kate Atkinson (actress) (born 1972), Australian actress * Kate Atkinson (writer) Kate Atkinson (born 20 December 1951) is an English writer of novels, plays and short stories. She is known for creating the Jac ...

. It was published in 2000.

Plot introduction

The novel begins with chapter one of a murder mystery set in a seaside resort. This tale is later revealed as being written by Euphemia (Effie) Stuart-Murray as part of a creative writing class at the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee; . Abbreviated as ''Dund.'' for post-nominals. is a public university, public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a University college#United Kingdom, university college in 1881 with a donation ...

in 1972. This main narrative is in fact being told by Effie to her presumed mother Nora on a remote Scottish Island in return for which Effie hopes to entice from Nora the truth about her family history and parentage...

Reception

Reviews were mixed: *

Stephanie Zacharek Stephanie Zacharek is an American film critic at ''Time'', based in New York City. From 2013 to 2015, she was the principal film critic for ''The Village Voice''. She was a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist in criticism. Early life Stephanie Zachare ...

in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' complained: "sometimes it's clear in a novel's first 50 pages that its story is going nowhere fast. But there are other times, and harder cases, when a novelist kicks off a book with such lively, crackling prose and such deft character descriptions that you hang on desperately to the hope that its plot is going somewhere good...But there's a problem with too much clever wordplay and so many enticingly detailed descriptions: they can build you up just to let you down. Atkinson is terrific at setting the stage for her story; she just hasn't given it a very good foundation, and eventually it crumbles away to nothing." *''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' were also unimpressed: "Atkinson’s jokes are funny, her characters lively (if cartoonish), but her scattershot approach to storytelling wears thin long before the end." *

Alex Clark Alex Clark may refer to: * Alex Clark (baseball), American baseball player * Alex Clark (journalist), British literary journalist * Alex Clark (politician) Alex M. Clark (March 22, 1916 – February 14, 1991) was an American politician. He bec ...

of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' was more positive: "In her third novel, Kate Atkinson has a crack at the none-too-subtle business of metafiction. Emotionally Weird - an unexplained and inexplicably grotty title that suggests a rather different kind of book - is teeming with various fictions; the book itself boasts a bewildering array of typefaces. A more insidious by-product of this carnival of

confabulation In psychology, confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the a ...

is that, after a while, the reader has no idea what's true and what isn't. By that point, Atkinson is relying, rather too heavily at times, on the fact that we won't care, so beguiled are we by her narrative exuberance and comic invention...Take out the typefaces and banish the overly ponderous outer reaches of this book and it's just a series of gags; but they're pretty good gags, and it's none the worse for that.""Wag tales Comedy? Metafiction? Shaggy dog story? Alex Clark enjoys Kate Atkinson's Emotionally Weird"
''The Guardian'', 11 March 2000.

References

External links

Author web pageEmotionally weird? Moi?Kim Bunce interviews Whitbread-winning author Kate Atkinson about God, motherhood and the uncontrolled imagination
{{Kate Atkinson 2000 British novels Novels by Kate Atkinson Family saga novels Novels about writers British mystery novels Novels set in Scotland University of Dundee Doubleday (publisher) books Metafictional novels