Overview

Emotionally Weird centres on Effie, a student at Dundee University in the 1970s, who has been raised in isolation by her eccentric mother Nora. As Effie attends a creative writing course, Nora recounts a series of increasingly improbable life stories, forcing Effie to confront truth, fiction and her own origins.

Writing & Voice

We found the writing playful, sharp and knowingly excessive. Atkinson delights in digression and parody, shifting tone with ease. The novel is self aware and comic, but beneath the humour runs a careful control of language and structure.

Content & Perspective

The story alternates between Effie’s student life and Nora’s elaborate storytelling. We move through lectures, friendships and literary debates alongside gothic pastiche and melodrama. The tension lies in working out what can be trusted and what is invention.

Themes

The novel explores motherhood, authorship and identity. It asks who gets to tell a life story and how narrative can both protect and distort. It also satirises academic life, literary ambition and the myths people create to survive.

What Worked

• Inventive structure that rewards attentive reading.
• Bold humour that never loses intelligence.
• Memorable characters driven by voice and contradiction.

Minor Quibbles

• The layered storytelling can feel deliberately overwhelming.
• Readers seeking realism may resist the excess.

Final Thoughts

Emotionally Weird is a witty, wilful novel we admired for its audacity, emotional intelligence, and sly questioning of who controls stories and why.

Rating: ★★★★½ / 5