All Families are Psychotic - Softcover

Coupland, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007117531 ISBN 13: 9780007117536

Publisher: Flamingo, 2002

Synopsis

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?

About this title

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0007117531
• ISBN 13: 9780007117536
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288