| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
D.C devotee,
By puddin (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All Families are Psychotic (Paperback)
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
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not Coupland's Best,
By A Customer
This review is from: All Families are Psychotic (Paperback)
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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favourite books,
By Complainathon (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All Families are Psychotic (Paperback)
I believe that, along with Generation X and Generation A, this ranks as one of Douglas Coupland's best books.
If you have doubts about the sanity of your own family, if you're convinced that your childhood was worse than anybody else's, if you believed when you were a child that you had been switched with a gypsy baby at the hospital (as I surely must have been) then you must read this book. If you have ever had family envy (as in 'I wish I had X's family') this book is for you. All Families are Psychotic makes it clear that we -- the people with puzzling, odd, alien families (i.e. most people) -- are not alone. It explains why it's kind of Ok to be us. And that our families make us who we are. If my family weren't so awful, maybe I'd be a boring person. How horrible would THAT be? So I will keep my psycho dad, and my former-beauty-queen mom, and my right-wing brothers. Because they shaped me into everything I am. If I believed in heroes, Douglas Coupland would be one of them. But of course I don't. Because I'm part of Generation X.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
