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Review 1 - AuthorTrek "'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 |
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Review 2 - Pandorah: what the critics said "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. |