EMOTIONALLY WEIRD

In a sprawling Scottish island summer home, a mother and daughter swap stories: Dundee University student Effie describes problems with professors and her stoner boyfriend while her mother, Nora, airs gothic family tales that eventually reveal Effie's true paternity. By using a medley of typestyles and fonts, Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum) allows these highly unreliable narrators to interrupt each other with corrections and digressions -- a tricky structure that actually works, thanks to the meticulously constructed narrative. Ultimately, Emotionally Weird proves a sparkling comic meditation on how authors choose to tell their stories. A-