7.4 /10 1 Votes7.4
Publication date 2001 Followed by Hey Nostradamus! ISBN 0-679-31140-8 | 3.7/5 Goodreads Originally published 2001 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardback, Paperback) Pages 279 pp (Fortieth anniversary edition) Similar Douglas Coupland books, Novels |
All families are psychotic
All Families Are Psychotic is the seventh novel by Douglas Coupland, published in 2001. The novel is the fictional story of the dysfunctional Drummond family and their adventures on a trip to see their daughter's space shuttle launch.
Contents
Plot
The novel is the tale of the Drummond family from Vancouver gathering together to watch Sarah Drummond's space shuttle blast off at the Kennedy Space Center. The Drummonds are a group of misfits with a wide array of personal foibles and intricacies. The novel's plot is the tale of events that reunite the Drummond family after many years of estrangement.
Several plot points of the book include geriatric HIV, armed robbery, death in Walt Disney World, pharmaceutical drug lords, black market baby sales, Daytona Beach, and suicide attempts.
Early in the book the men of the family travel to nearby Walt Disney World where they receive a package destined for the Bahamas containing a letter written by Prince William stolen from Princess Diana's casket. The men start to travel to the Bahamas to deliver their package, but everything and anything happens to them on the way.
The novel is told in a similar style to Miss Wyoming, with many plot flashbacks. However, the focus in this novel is on the temporally linear plot.
Characters
Inspiration
The trigger for the book was Coupland's mother's discovery of the Internet, mirrored by Janet's discovery of the Internet in the text.
"My mother discovered the internet about two years ago. She's got this really weird medical condition which only 150 people on the planet have and she's managed to get them all together. It's transformed her as a person, she got rid of all her old friends – they're boring, they don't care about what's happening – chucked out all her clothes, shops only Banana Republic and Gap now. She's always been an interesting person but now she's interested in the world again. Watching that transformation, obviously, is the trigger for this book."
In Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs, the narrator says about his girlfriend: "All she'll say is they are psychotic, as if everybody else's family isn't."
History
The novel is one of Coupland's more popular. In its initial publication run, it was printed in two halves, glued back to back, so that one cover was upside down. The reader was forced, halfway through the novel, to turn the book upside down to continue reading. This quirk was eliminated on subsequent print runs, but the cover still retained this peculiar arrangement in some later printings.
The original British cover, which featured a woman in a rocket ship, caused Coupland some grief, as "it misportrays the book's contents and sort of . . . sends the wrong message out". The original Canadian and American covers featured a Larry Sultan photograph of an older woman staring out a window through curtains.
In 2006, DreamWorks announced that a film version of All Families Are Psychotic would be released in 2006 or 2007. The project remains in development. Writer Mark Poirier has been commissioned to adapt the screenplay from Coupland's novel.