"'Captain's
log supplemental,' Bob announced, rolling in around dawn, 'subject has entered
pon farr, the Vulcan mating cycle. You are the lovely T'Pring - fancy a
shag?'"
Nora
and Effie Stuart-Murray are sitting on an island off the west coast of
Scotland, telling each other stories. Effie's tale is of her recent life
as a student at Dundee University, whilst Nora tells of Effie's murky family
history, with the announcement that she is not, in fact, Effie's mother.
The hyphenated 'Stuart' is the only clue left that Nora and Effie have royalty
as ancestors.
However, you do begin to worry about this novel when Effie's audience, Nora,
gets bored and decides to go to bed. If a fictional character has been
diagnosed with ennui, then what chance have we of following this novel to its
conclusion? We get to see the fascinating acts of feeding cats, the
boiling of kettles in Effie's life story, but we do also get occasional
glimpses of the invasion of Vietnam. Effie quotes large chunks of Archie
McCue's abstract lecture, as if to prove how boring the man is, when one or two
words would have sufficed. Archie's lecture appears to happen in real
time, and it seems as though Atkinson is writing the antithesis of a crime
novel, by having all her main suspects meet up in the beginning, rather
than at the end. But Archie McCrue is no detective. Chick
Petrie is, and so is Madame Astarti, the heroine of Effie's attempt at
fiction. Practically everyone who is anyone turns up at McCrue's lecture,
an unlikely scenario for an early morning lecture during a power cut in the strikes
of 72.
Emotionally Weird takes a long time to get going. There's something wacky
about all the characters, but none of them are truly amusing. In a recent
interview in the Observer, Kate Atkinson commented that she found it very
difficult to get going on this novel, and to achieve the right tone, and I'm
afraid it shows in these early pages. Compared with Joanne Harris'
Blackberry Wine, with which Emotionally Weird shares some themes, Atkinson's
novel seems quite poor indeed, to begin within. This book hasn't really
come close to universal praise in the press, despite a very enthusiastic piece
in the Scotsman. I approached this book warily since a Star Trek fan is a
very prominent character (Effie's boyfriend, 'Magic Bob'). Oh no, I
thought, Atkinson's pitted all her wits against a very easy stereotype.
My prejudice came from the fact that, like Bob, I'm also a fan of Cult TV
(although not quite as drugged or sluggish as him).
At the
beginning of the novel, Effie is trying to work out how she can leave Bob.
But you've only got to look at her narrative to see how far she's been
infected. A couple of Effie's similes come from Doctor Who (the obvious
'Dalek' and 'Tardis'), whilst her supporting cast have been given the names of
minor, but significant characters from Star Trek: Christopher Pike,
Janice Rand, Kevin Riley, and even Gary Seven turns up as the author of some
obscure paper. Purists should note that the novel occurs during the
broadcast of the Doctor Who adventure, The Curse of Peladon. Maybe Effie
should get out more. Maybe I should get out more. Around about 50%
of Effie's male acquaintances seem to be writing fantasy novels, boring the
pants off everyone with varying degrees of success. However, Atkinson
does present Magic Bob much as Russell T. Davies would: as sad, but
lovable. As to what genre Kate Atkinson would like to work in, I would
stab a guess at the crime novel. No doubt her style would be unique,
but still far more competent than Effie's novels starring Madame Astarti.
My favourite character from the novel is Professor Cousins, who interrupts
fatuous McCrue with the observation that all fiction could be tied down to the
questions surrounding identity, citing Oedipus Rex as an example. You do
get the feeling that Atkinson would tend to agree with the professor, whilst
wondering when the scourging of eyes is finally going to arrive. But as
with any novel with a phenomenally long cast list, you have to be patient, you
have to wait for Emotionally Weird to wield its magic, to endure before the
blockbuster ending arrives.
Kate Atkinson
employs a variety of styles and fonts in this book which she claims to be about
'words' (as she said in her Observer interview). I've done much the same
myself when I've been writing. The reasons why I used such techniques was
that I was being defensive, placing the expected critics of my work into the
text itself, as Atkinson does here, in the voice of Nora. No doubt
Emotionally Weird means much to Atkinson, and she fears that it will not mean much
to anyone else. Martha Sewell and her creative writing class ponder that
old cliché, that everyone has a novel within them. Maybe the relevant
question should be: does anyone have a third novel within them? After a
shaky start, Emotionally Weird answers in the affirmative, with a resounding
conclusion that does leave you wanting more.
AuthorTrek
Rating: 7/10.
Kevin
Patrick Mahoney now looks at how “Emotionally Weird” was received by the press:
"The
Klingons... were as real to Bob as the French or the Germans. More real,
certainly, than say, Luxembergers."
The
above is an extract from Kate Atkinson's novel utilised by Jane Shilling in her
review in the Sunday Telegraph. If a sentence could be seen to typify a
novel, then this is it. Kate Atkinson has decided to pit her whole wit
against the flabby target of a Star Trek fan, Magic Bob - a man so fat and so
inert that she could hardly fail to miss. There is nothing particularly
novel in saying that Star Trek fans are a bit sad. I know, since I'm a
bit partial to watching a bit of the old Trek meself. So, part of me
is seething in anger, pissed off that someone has chosen to attack my race once
more, whilst secretly hoping that Atkinson has noticed the irony in her own
joke. What's quite funny is that if you do search for
"Emotionally Weird" on AltaVista at the moment, then all you get is a
long list of Red Dwarf quote files. It would be nice to think that
Atkinson made this link deliberately, but I don't think she's too enamoured of
the web, as she revealed in her Amazon.com interview. The really sad
thing is that Klingons probably have contributed more to Western culture than
Luxembergers, apart from an astounding ability to play football very
badly. In fact, I must say that hamburgers have a more real existence for
me than Luxembergers, since I can buy one and not the other in
MacDonalds. At least the author does better than Julie Myerson, who uses
the euphemism "episodic adventures". Ah, Star Trek - the drama
serial which dares not speak it name. I sincerely hope that Kate Atkinson
never has to exchange niceties with a Dalek. Certainly Atkinson's blurb
writer should be shot, since he/she refers to 'the' Luxembergers on the
dustjacket. For the moment though, the impression I get from these
reviews is that the old joke about Captain Kirk meeting his nemesis in a toilet
is much wittier than any of Atkinson's jests. The Scotsman is far more
positive though: "the accuracy of Atkinson's caricatures sends jolts of
pleasures off the page."
According to Jane Shilling, Emotionally Weird is "very funny and extremely
amused by itself", whilst Julie Myerson in the Independent on Sunday
comments that "I wish I could say that the gags are unforced".
The over-enthusiastic reviewer in The Scotsman believes that there are
"indecent supply of jokes". Myerson goes onto say that this
"isn't so much a story as a parade of linguistic prancing - a sequence of
non sequiturs, driven by wordplay rather than any convincing journey or
motivation." So, what does happen? Well, Nora and Effie
Stuart-Murray sit on an island off the west coast of Scotland, and tell each
other stories. Nora and Effie may well be mother and daughter, but
aren't. The hyphenated 'Stuart' forms part of Nora's revelations, for
apparently they are descended from that most fashionable branch of dead
royals. Effie, meanwhile, talks about her time at Dundee University.
According to the Scotsman's critic, Kate Atkinson went to university at the
same time as her character. With this impartation, it seems very much
that Kate Atkinson has written a most self-indulgent novel. Then again,
J. M. Coetzee won the Booker Prize recently with a fiction starring a character
who had the same job as himself. So, Atkinson seems prone to flights of fancy,
whilst never really straying from reality. Weird.
You really do have to worry when an author starts to romance about their pets -
it's a technique which is quite difficult to pull off. One of the novel's
many plots concerns the disappearance of the 'yellow dog', (which I last saw in
Rome). According to the Scotsman, "canine characters are much in
evidence in Emotionally Weird, adding judiciously to the general
mayhem". The danger is that the animals become the stars of the
circus, rather than the humans, like the all-knowing cat in Patricia Cornwell's
Hornet's Nest.
Let's hope that in this case, Atkinson has created her mutts with the same
dignity as those within Kirsten Bakis' Lives of the Monster Dogs or
Clifford. D. Simak's 'City'. So, has Kate Atkinson gone mad?
According to Eithne Farry from Amazon.co.uk, this novel is related to
Atkinson's other work ('Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and 'Human
Croquet'), since "family history and identity are Kate Atkinson's twinned
keynote themes".
However, Effie
has also been part of a creative writing course, and goes into great depth
about what everyone in the class has been writing, and how they defined
themselves through their fiction. Oh no! Writing about writing, the
actual process of putting words on a page, is another difficult feat, and
should only be approached by the most competent of novelists. The use of
a whole variety of fonts in the novel could annoy some, as Julie Myerson
writes:"why does it bother me so much that Kate Atkinson's third novel is
printed in four typefaces?" The Scotsman and Eithne Farry also
mention Atkinson's distinctive use of parentheses and ellipses. However,
Kate Atkinson allows Nora and Effie, in their interjections, to criticise each
other's narrative in academic terms. According to the Scotsman, this is
evidence of the author triumphant, "cunningly pre-empting accusations of
being prolix, undisciplined, prone to unwieldy cast lists". However,
I've only used similar devices in the past when I thought that what I was
writing passionately about wouldn't be taken seriously. Maybe Kate
Atkinson had the same motivation.
There is some disagreement amongst the critics. Shilling and Myerson
can't agree over whether the "lecherous lecturers" have
"sluttish wives", or an embarrassing "feminist wife who talks
about menstruation and genitals". However, their main disagreement
is who this novel will appeal to. According to Shilling, Emotionally
Weird is hardly all-embracing: "the rest of us, hovering a little way
outside the in-joke may be left feeling rather lonely and excluded".
Farry would tend to agree: "Whilst this self-conscious wordplay is fun for
those who enjoy a more literary book, those who simply enjoy a good read may
get lost in the jostle of competing language construction." The
Scotsman is again a bit more positive: "It will be enjoyed, hugely, by
literary and non-literary readers". But it is difficult to take the
Scotsman seriously, so much is the critic overwhelmed by the pleasure of
Atkinson's novel. He/she even goes to the trouble of creating an acronym
which is even more problematic than Zadie Smith's KEVIN in White Teeth: KOASA -
"the Kate Atkinson Opening Sentence Accolade". Passez vous le
sick bucket? Still, having said all that, I've been tempted enough to buy
Emotionally Weird, and judge it for myself.
Kevin
Mahoney
