Emotionally Weird: Amazon.de: Kate Atkinson: Englische Bücher

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Family history and identity are Kate Atkinson's twinned keynote themes. Behind the Scenes at the Museum (winner of the Whitbread Book of the year), had "The Family" at its centre, a sweep of charming, related genes who sauntered through the fin de siècle to the less glamorous 1992. Her second novel, Human Croquet starred the Fairfaxes, all missing mothers, perfumed with nicotine and danger, and strange aunts. Larkin may be right, your parents fuck you up but in Atkinson's novels you have to find out who they are before you can start laying blame.

On the surface, Emotionally Weird follows the trend. Effie and her mother Nora are staying in the decaying family home on a small island off the West coast of Scotland. To keep themselves amused they begin telling stories. Nora's are about their ancestors, in whose veins blood blue as "delphiniums and lupins" flows, and the real identity of Effie's father and mother. Nora's language is like her "sea-change eyes", full of poetry and strange beauty. Effie's tales of life at the University of Dundee and her life with Star Trek obsessed Bob are more prosaic and funny: "I did so hope that Bob was a dress rehearsal, a kind of mock relationship, like a mock exam, to prepare me for the real thing."

The novel becomes troublesome where it follows Effie to a creative writing course at the university. The class is run by Martha: who writes poetry "with impenetrable syntax about a life where nothing happened." The other characters in the novel are pre-occupied with the same need to find meaning through writing. Archetypal detective stories, sword and sorcery fantasy, doctor and nurse romantic scenarios, existential angst and liberal use of ellipses are given free reign. 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.

In this novel, confused paternity is only part of the struggle for identity, the words you use are also defining- you are what you write. Some readers will revel in the Shandy-esque shape of the experimental in this narrative, others may find it's a literary joke taken too far.--Eithne Farry. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Readers who survive the first 20 pages of this dense and playful novel, with its three different openings, constant jokes, and crowded cast of characters, will find themselves rewarded with a leisurely postmodern romp through the student ferment and bodily indulgences of the early 1970s. Although the publisher has called Emotionally Weird a comic novel, it is essentially unclassifiable, both further-reaching and less "meaningful" than it first appears. Kate Atkinson's book begins with chapter 1 of a bad murder mystery being written by Effie Andrews for a creative-writing course at the University of Dundee in 1972. But the action soon shifts to a wintry island in the Hebrides, where Effie is trying to elicit the story of her parentage from her single mother, Nora, while spinning a humorous first-person narrative of her college life. Only near the end of the book does she finally wrench the story from her mother: Effie's bizarre origins; the identity of her father; and the whole unlikely tale of her mother's family.

Like a Borgesian labyrinth, with other stories thrown in, including a laughably convenient introduction of magic realism, it is impossible to know what to take seriously--or "jocoseriously," to paraphrase another of Atkinson's influences: the Joyce of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. In her third novel, much of Atkinson's humor is incidental, even parenthetical. (We are told in passing, for example, that Effie's dissertation is called "Henry James: Man or Maze?") She is at her best when introducing her eccentric characters, such as the elderly Professor Cousins, who is sometimes lucid, sometimes not. "As with anyone in the department," Effie explains, "it wasn't always easy to distinguish between the two states. The university's strict laws of tenure dictated that he had to be dead at least three months before he could be removed from behind his desk." Professor Cousins, like the author, enjoys word games along the order of those in Alice in Wonderland, and Atkinson's use of Scottish idiom comes to function as a sort of word game. She also brings in a few killjoys (a militant feminist, a militant Christian, a literary theorist) to complicate an already loopy narrative and to spike the punch.

Janice smelt of piety and coal tar soap. She had recently become a Christian, a neophyte of a student Christian fellowship whose members roamed the corridors of Airlie, Belmont and Chalmers Halls looking for likely converts (the afraid, the alone, the abandoned) and those who needed to use the Bible to fill in the spaces where their personalities should have been.

As Emotionally Weird develops, Atkinson relies more and more on the postmodern gag of characters commenting on the unfolding action. There is no telling how she finally draws these disparate threads onto a single spool, but in the end, even the slightest subplots are neatly tied up and the most transient characters accounted for. --Regina Marler -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Brilliant Wordplay 25. Juni 2000

Von Merit La Freniere

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Atkinson is the sort of writer I read in a blissful state. Her characters are many layered, her wordplay is fantastical, her plotline engrossing. I appreciate that her characters are, while not always exactly sane, intelligent. That's not something I can say about many novelists.

She is a new find for me, and I'm very happy to have found a writer I enjoy as much as Barbara Trapido. From me, this is a very high compliment.

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Perspective Lost 21. Juni 2000

Von Ein Kunde

I had enjoyed "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" and "Human Croquet" so much that I eagerly anticipated Kate Atkinson's next release. I must admit, I'm a bit disappointed. Atkinson's unconventional yet compelling use of perspective has been present in all of her novels. However, in "Emotionally Weird", the story becomes completely buried beneath dozens of functionless characters and hazy motives. Her unique style... fresh and funny... shone through in her first two novels. Here it is lost to a weaker plot and gloomy scenery.

I must admit that part of what may have alienated me (as a silly American)was the overwhelming presence of unfamiliar Scottish references. Whereas these same type of landmarks may have been present in "Behind the Scenes at the Museum", there they were made familiar and funny by their meaning to the more likable characters that she had created.

a good read! 21. Mai 2003

Von florida-k

Format:Taschenbuch

I'd enjoyed Kate Atkinson's previous two novels so much I was disappointed when this one got such dreadful reviews, and I admit that put me off reading it.

Now that I've finally got round to it, I can't see what everyone was complaining about! The characters are interesting and well-written, the story is involving and the language just what we've come to expect from Atkinson.
This is very much in a similar style to "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" and "Human Croquet", so if you enjoyed them there's a very good chance you'll enjoy this too.