The letter A was the next to be pulled from the alphabet bag, and it brought me to Kate Atkinson, an author whose work I have enjoyed in the past. There were several books of hers that I hadn't read sitting on the shelf and I plumped for Emotionally Weird. I find it hard to describe this book, or indeed give an adequate outline of the plot, such as it was. Effie, a student at Dundee University, is holed up on a bleak island off the Scottish coast with her mother Nora, and they begin to tell each other stories. Effie wants to know about her father, but Nora seems evasive or incapable of telling her anything useful, or indeed truthful. Effie relates her time as a student amongst a bunch of untalented creative writers, and ineffectual tutors, whilst living with her accidental boyfriend. There are many, many characters, all, apparently writing books, of which we get to see various extracts scattered throughout the book. The plot felt very loose and incomprehensible at times. I didn't relate to anyone, and I didn't really care what happened to a single one of them - which is a big problem for me when reading a book. However, there were some nice passages of prose where I felt that we were getting somewhere and the next minute - boom, either a book extract or another trip in a car to a random place came in and it took me out of the story again. As you can probably tell, this was not the book for me and I was pleased to finish it and move onto something new. Sorry Ms Atkinson, but I might just have to go back to your Jackson Brodie series rather than tackle another of your standalone novels. Hey ho!
My STAR rating: TWO
Length: 496 print pages.
Price I paid: Free, borrowed from my husband.
Formats available: print, unabridged audio download, ebook.
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