Emotionally Weird'' is really two intertwining stories that make for one gangly comic novel. As the book opens, Effie and her mother, Nora, have sequestered themselves in Nora's large, dank family home off the coast of Scotland, where they've decided to wrap themselves in shawls and blankets and tell each other stories. Effie regales her mother with a semi-surreal adventure about her life as a student at Dundee; her narrative includes an array of oddball teachers, a yellow dog that's hit by a car only to be miraculously brought back to life, and a hapless stoner boyfriend named Bob, for whom the Klingons on ''Star Trek'' are as real as ''the French or the Germans, more real certainly than, say, Luxembourgers.'' The madcap tale she spins is made even more mysterious by the fact that someone just may be following her, and she has no idea why.

Nora's story is more gothic, more tragic, and it involves a series of secrets about Effie's past. It's darker and more conventional than Effie's story, but it's also more engaging, perhaps because it's much more economical. Effie's story, on the other hand, goes on. And on.

While the narrators' constant backtalk can be tiresome, Atkinson's clever and sophisticated prose preserves the voices' sparkling energy. Readers may guess the family secret before it is revealed, but that doesn't steal any thunder from the unsettling and utterly original denouement.