All Families Are Psychotic

Rating:
Summary: Coupland's stumble
Review: Tolstoy once wrote "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." With Douglas Coupland, the sentiment seems to be that "All Families Are Psychotic." A wildly bizarre look at a soap opera family gone crazy, unfortunately this book is rather humorless by Coupland's standards.

The dysfunctional Drummond family is gathering together, as daughter Susan is about to be sent up into space. As they do, they reflect on their tangled, messy past -- including the fact that son Wade slept with his stepmother Nickie, then got shot by his father Ted, striking his mother Janet. Now Janet and Wade have AIDS, and Nickie is HIV positive.

To make things worse, downbeat brother Bryan shows up with his anarchist girlfriend Shw, who is pregnant. She claims she's going to abort, but has secretly arranged to sell her child to a seemingly ordinary couple. And Ted has prostate cancer. In the few days before Susan's launch, the bizarre extended family wrangles out some of their old arguments, and learns a few new things about themselves.

Every author stumbles, and consider "All Families Are Psychotic" as Douglas Coupland stubbing his toe. It's not exactly a bad book, but it lacks the complexity and wry wit that most of his books have. He tends to do modern sociology well, while this mainly seems like a soap opera gone completely mad.

Coupland populates this world of his with insane hippies, amorous astronauts and suicidal musicians. So you can guess that there's plenty of trouble. The scenarios are mostly pretty funny, such as the mad chase for a letter to Princess Di, although they get a bit over-the-top sometimes. However, Coupland slows the pace for some insightful looks at America, family and the shattering aftereffects of divorce.

The characters lack dimension -- specifically, they lack the "likability" dimension. Only the jilted Janet is likable, as she steps out of the "dutiful housewife" mold and becomes her own person. The others are almost good characters, but Coupland never gives us a reason to really like any of them -- even the thalidomide-deformed (and married) Susan is having a fling with her (also married) mission commander.

While it's grim a lot of the time, "All Families Are Psychotic" has sprawling flashes of wit and peculiar humor. An interesting read, but not one of Coupland's better novels.