Sara Pascoe’s debut novel draws you in slowly and then all at once. The first line is fairly standard. The second, a little less so. Still, if you skimmed the first chapter, it would be easy to think you knew what you were getting: your basic, by-the-numbers quirky-girl-meets-boy romcom. This is because that is exactly what our narrator wants us to think. She’s trying very hard to be basic! And she would love this to be a romcom. “I hope since our chat he thinks I’m normal,” she confides cheerily. “I told him I was several times.”
She is Sophie; he is Chris. They met working “on the buses” taking tourists round London; now Sophie works in a pub and Chris is buying a drink, and he doesn’t remember her at all. Or does he? Part of the joy of Weirdo is not knowing what to expect, or rather in having your expectations subverted by Sophie’s smoothie-maker of a mind. You put your preconceived ideas in, and Sophie – or rather Pascoe – shakes them all about.
