Emotionally Weird
Synopsis
On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was – variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, the land of cakes and William Wallace, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers). But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?
Table of Contents
Blood and Bone
The Art of Structuralist Criticism
There Are Places Between Edinburgh and Dundee
Is Achieving a Transcendentally Coherent View of the World Still a Good Thing?
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Epub ISBN: 9781409094616
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EMOTIONALLY WEIRD
A BLACK SWAN BOOK : 9780552997348
First published in Great Britain
in 2000 by Doubleday,
a division of Transworld Publishers
Black Swan edition published 2001
Copyright © Kate Atkinson 2000
Kate Atkinson has asserted her right under the Copyright Designs and Patents
Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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What the critics wrote about
Emotionally Weird
‘The lustre, energy and panache of her writing are as striking as ever in this, her third novel . . . Funny, bold and memorable’
Helen Dunmore,
The Times
The Times
‘Lively . . . very funny’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Complex, multi-layered and beautifully written . . . brimming with quirky characters and original storytelling . . . Kate Atkinson has struck gold with this unique offering’
Time Out
‘A truly comic novel – achingly funny in parts – challenging and executed with wit and mischief . . . an hilarious and magical trip’
Meera Syal,
Daily Express
Daily Express
‘Her novels are remarkable both in and of themselves, and as evidence of an important emerging body of work from a brilliant and profoundly original writer’
Daily Telegraph
‘A challenging work of fiction . . . brilliantly original’
Mirror
‘Atkinson’s strength as a writer lies in her talent for observational humour’
Guardian
‘Sends jolts of pleasure off the page . . . capable of causing loud and involuntary cackling on public transport. Atkinson’s funniest foray yet . . . a novel for people who love novels . . . eccentric, unstoppably entertaining, it is a work of Dickensian or even Shakespearean plenty . . . will be enjoyed hugely by both literary and non-literary readers’
Scotsman
‘Atkinson is brilliantly, defiantly playful with the stuff of fiction’
New Statesman
‘Her descriptive powers are striking. She is also witty . . . thought-provoking and nonconformist’
Sunday Times
‘A novel purely for fun . . . entirely to be recommended’
Independent
‘Really comic, really tragic, bracingly unsentimental’
Boston Sunday Globe
‘Her enigmatic and comic flair rise to greater heights in this
reductio ad absurdum
’
reductio ad absurdum
’
Sunday Tribune
‘Her inventive energy, unfettered by realism, make this roller coaster of a novel a highly entertaining read’
Mail on Sunday
‘A sparkling comic meditation on how authors choose to tell their stories’
Entertainment Weekly
‘Atkinson writes with the most finely tuned literary instincts . . . funny, clever and strangely moving’
Caledonian
‘Fairly crackles with energy, wit and the pleasure of writing’
Lesley Glaister,
Literary Review
Literary Review
‘A full-bore, old-fashioned yarn – the kind that keeps you turning pages, hurrying toward the denouement long after you’ve told yourself you’re going to bed’
Washington Post
‘Subtle, evocative and wonderfully funny’
Glasgow Herald
‘A brilliant and gripping piece of fiction that not only proves Atkinson’s adeptness as a storyteller but also firmly establishes her as one of the most remarkable writers of recent times’
Yorkshire Post
‘Atkinson has found her best subject, thereby letting out the secret to writing a truly funny comic novel’
Newsday
Also by
KATE
ATKINSON
Behind the Scenes
at the Museum
A surprising, tragicomic and subversive family saga set in York, Kate Atkinson’s prizewinning first novel, like all her novels, has a mystery at its heart.
‘Little short of a masterpiece’
Daily Mail
Human Croquet
A multilayered, moving novel about the forest of Arden, a girl who drops in and out of time, and the heartrending mystery of a lost mother.
‘Brilliant and engrossing’
Penelope Fitzgerald
Not the End of the World
Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short stories – playful and profound.
‘Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom’
Sunday Times
Case Histories
The first novel to feature Jackson Brodie, the former police detective, who finds himself investigating three separate cold murder cases in Cambridge, while still haunted by a tragedy in his own past.
‘The best mystery of the decade’
Stephen King
One Good Turn
Jackson Brodie, in Edinburgh during the Festival,
is drawn into a vortex of crimes and mysteries,
each containing a kernel of the next,
like a set of nesting Russian dolls.
‘The most fun I’ve had with a novel this year’
Ian Rankin
When Will There Be Good News?
A six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later, Jackson Brodie is on a fatal journey that will hurtle him into its aftermath.
‘Genius . . . insightful, often funny, life-affirming’
Sunday Telegraph
For Lesley Denby, née Allison, with love
With thanks to:
Helen Clyne, Lesley Denby, Helen How, the Howard Hotel (Edinburgh), Maureen Lenehan, Gareth McLean, David Mattock, Martin Myers, Ali Smith, Sarah Wood.
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