Product Description

On the eve of the next Space Shuttle mission, a divided family comes together!Warm, witty and wise, 'All Families Are Psychotic' is Coupland at the very top of his form. In a cheap motel an hour from Cape Canaveral, Janet Drummond takes her medication, and does a rapid tally of the whereabouts of her children. Wade has spent the night in jail; suicidal Bryan is due to arrive at any moment with his vowel-free girlfriend, Shw; and then there is Sarah, 'a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash' -- here in Orlando to be the star of Friday's shuttle mission. With Janet's ex-husband and his trophy wife also in town, Janet spends a moment contemplating her family, and where it all went wrong. Or did it?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21306 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In All Families Are Psychotic, Coupland combines Anne Tyler's compassionate command of family relationships with a world-view that probably hails from a distant galaxy. His latest work of genius is fast-paced, blisteringly funny and the literary equivalent of electric-shock therapy.

NASA Astronauts must be the healthiest people on the planet, and Sarah Drummond, preparing for her debut launch from Cape Canaveral, is no exception. Unfortunately, Sarah's family, gathered in Florida to witness the take-off, is sick--in every sense. Her brother Wade, a low-rent hockey star whose only real talent is bedding women, is performing an elaborate tango with terminal illness and the Federal Penitentiary system. Her mother Janet is a devotee of Internet porn and outlawed medication. Then there's Bryan, who has nothing wrong with him except a highly contradictory desire to have children and kill himself. And Bryan's girlfriend, who really is called Shaw, and really doesn't care about much except renting her womb to the highest bidder.

While Sarah patiently prepares for outer space, Wade glimpses a lucrative, if desperate remedy to his family's manifold miseries. And as the countdown begins, the dysfunctional Drummonds--a family who have hitherto been unable to meet up without sustaining gunshot wounds--find themselves united in a last, labyrinthine quest for personal salvation. It's a journey punctuated by medication schedules, peppered with sleazy trailer-parks and even sleazier characters, a Disneyworld scented with dirty money and encroaching death. But somewhere along the way, the Drummonds are about to discover that they're not much different to any other family.

--Matthew Baylis

Review
'Heartbreakingly bitter-sweet!This book will make you want to phone your own psychotic family and tell them how much you love them.' Daily Telegraph 'Miraculous!has you laughing, thinking and crying all at once.' Evening Standard 'As funny as The Simpsons!The dialogue fizzes and snarls with brilliant one-liners. By the end of this energetic yet philosophical novel you will be cheering on its hapless rabble of outcasts, for Coupland's coup de theatre is to entice you to suffer this family as if it were your own.' The Times 'Irresistibly hilarious, unique and wonderful.' Independent on Sunday 'Coupland's last four novels are so good and so distinctive that they seem to me to mark a genuine seismic shift in the literary landscape.' Nicholas Blincoe, New Statesman 'Douglas Coupland is one of the freshest, most exciting voices of the novel! He has a wonderful talent' Tom Wolfe 'Coupland has passion and pace, intelligence and wit. If you find anything about the way we live now disturbing and wrong, he is your man. (He is my man.)' Daily Telegraph 'Coupland at his best can make a single phrase say more than many another writer's whole novel.' Jenny Turner, London Review of Books

New Statesman
Coupland’s last four novels are so good and distinctive they seem to mark a seismic shift in the literary landscape.

Customer Reviews

D.C devotee
Absolutely wonderfull.No other author can make you laugh as often as he can make you cry. The simple idealism that this book ends on is beautifull. If only the carrot Coupland often dangles was real enough to bite so we could have more than a teasing glimpse of his world. It kept me distracted at work, I couldn't put it down. By far worth a read, and should this be the first book you read by him order Girlfriend in a coma and Life after God as back up, because trust me you'll want to start it all over again.xx

Lack of believability damages this book
After reading the excellent Girlfriend in a Coma and Hey! Nostradamus, I was really looking forward to All Families are Psychotic, but ultimately it was a let-down.

Basically, the book revolves around a dysfunctional family drawn back together because the daughter is a NASA astronaut about to go into space on the Shuttle. From this, there develops a sub-plot based on one of the son's dodgy dealings to generate large amounts of cash.

Coupland's writing style is informal and readable, and in places the book is funny - without ever approaching the "hilarious" status hinted at in many reviews. But any good work is completely undone by the contrived and completely unrealistic back-stories all the major characters have. Coupland's world-weary and cynical take on Florida is slightly overdone but also seems out of place in a book where the reader would have to be naive in the extreme to accept the characters and their lives as they are presented to them.

I couldn't recommend this novel because of this; try one of the aforementioned Coupland books instead.

Not Coupland's Best
Douglas Coupland's wry observations on Generations X and Y normally deliver witty dialogue and smart insights. But in this novel he puts his words into the mouths of the wrong people (particularly Janet)and the story is weak. The book suffers as a result.

Maybe all families are psychotic, but none are like this one. If you're new to Coupland, try some of his other recent novels - Girlfriend in a Coma, Miss Wyoming - and Generation X rather than this sub-standard book.