Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

 

This was the first book I read by Atkinson and it remains my favorite of hers. It's a delightful mix of academic satire, slapstick comedy, deep dark family secrets, and post-modern metafiction.

The last bit is apparent in its structure -- different typefaces are used to convey the multiples stories we get: Effie's trials and tribulations as a university student in her last year, the truth about Nora (Effie's mother), and Effie's first attempt at writing a mystery novel; not to mention snippets from self-important literary fiction by one of Effie's professors, a romance novel by his lecturer wife, a sci-fi story by a fellow student, and several formal logic problems for good measure.

The bulk of the story is that of Effie's, but she is repeatedly interrupted mid-narrative by her mother, who complains whenever she thinks too many characters are in a scene, or there should be more plot, or that Effie is taking too long to get to the point. The irony is that Nora herself has a story to tell, about her own and Effie's origins, but she uses the same narrative tricks Effie does to avoid telling it. Effie knows this, so she manipulates her own story (introducing certain characters at particular points, pretending to know less than she does) to get a reaction out of Nora, and eventually persuade her to come clean.

There are other games Atkinson plays. One professor's name alternates between "Watson Grant" and "Grant Watson," one page has a black square on it (a callback to Tristam Shandy), and on several occasions Effie revises her story as she is narrating it, to avoid an unpleasant event. Atkinson also makes subtle but repeated use of foreshadowing, rewarding a second reading. And throughout the book there is wordplay of every kind, and not just puns and jokes; books fly out of windows and send people to the hospital and a baby chokes on a crumpled page (words are dangerous!). A manuscript page is burnt, thereby undoing a parallel, tragic event in Effie's story. Words literally fall off pages and land on the ground, or they prise themselves off and hover like flies.

With all this going on, the novel is indisputably about the art of storytelling. Effie switches genres on a whim, Nora's frequent interruptions expound on the necessary elements of a story, and the classroom dialogue Effie depicts serves as a biting satire of literary criticism. All of it serves a higher purpose, however; what Effie wants, more than anything, is to understand how she came into the world -- her own story. Once she knows it, she can finish other stories.