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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
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Customer Reviews
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.
The completely over-the-top plot would usually put me off a book, but the hillarious situations and genuinely brilliant characters kept me hooked from start to finish.
The relationships in this book although downright bizzare, are also beautiful, and the last few lines between Janet and Sarah give the book the perfect ending.
Since reading this I have read Coupland's first book, Generation X, which was dissapionting in comparison to this, but I still look forward to reading some of his other work such as Girlfriend In A Coma and JPod.
However, this is not a bad thing. Read more
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