When the story opens we meet Janet Drummond waiting in her hotel room near Orlando. Her daughter Sarah is the token Canadian astronaut for the latest shuttle launch. Sarah is the pride of the family: she has technical and scientific degrees; she is still married to her first husband; she is perfect except for being born with one hand due to thalidomide. Sarah’s two older brothers are complete screw ups. Wade is a drifter diagnosed as HIV positive and his T-cell count is rapidly declining. Bryan suffers from depression and is easily bullied as his bossy, high-strung 18-year-old pregnant girlfriend Shw (not a typo). With these two sons it is no wonder that their father Ted has always favored Sarah. He’s no prize though. After cheating on Janet for years, he finally divorced her and got remarried to his last mistress Nickie. Oddly, Nickie and Janet are on friendly terms since they like to discuss Wade’s health problems.
So everybody is putting their numerous grudge matches and personal failings aside to watch Sarah go into space. Seems like a typical movie made for the Lifetime channel. Not really. The premise quickly becomes the launching pad for what transforms into a rather surrealistic adventure for everyone in the Drummond brood. Somehow Coupland’s characters end up in a Carl Hiaasen-Elmore Leonard-driven plot of intrigue, mayhem and selling infants on the black market while in Florida; it must be a state law JEB Bush can’t expunge. The Science Fiction element of the story involves the possible direction cloning and biotechnology could go when you see Wade’s get-rich-quick scheme. That dovetails into what Right Wingers would brand the conspiracy segment of the story as Coupland’s characters explain why Big Pharma, the Biotech Industry and Big Insurance don’t want a cure for AIDS, cancer and other terminal illnesses; as one friend told me, these corporations and lawyers want to make sure they acquire everything you own before you painfully die.
With the heavier issues addressed in the story put aside, it is still a great book and the first one with an ending I sincerely liked. It didn’t feel sudden or sappy. He ended it at an appropriate point. Families is his best novel since Shampoo Planet, a snapshot of life in North America during early Nineties. This one is sadly engraved to be the story set several months before George Bush was suddenly elevated into an effective leader despite being a dunce for 40 years.
The novel’s best section contains Coupland’s biting commentary about why Daytona Beach exists (see page 176). To me the explanation Wade provided applies to so much of the US and Canada.
The author is spot on with the characters; they are very developed, well done and believable, one of his strongest traits as a writer. I envy Coupland’s ability to capture the anger of his characters through words. When I met him for the book signing on this, he turned out to be nothing like the people he writes about. He is more like his opinion pieces: calm, easy-going, polite and tells humorous anecdotes without excessive profanity (unlike James Ellroy).
All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland
So everybody is putting their numerous grudge matches and personal failings aside to watch Sarah go into space. Seems like a typical movie made for the Lifetime channel. Not really. The premise quickly becomes the launching pad for what transforms into a rather surrealistic adventure for everyone in the Drummond brood. Somehow Coupland’s characters end up in a Carl Hiaasen-Elmore Leonard-driven plot of intrigue, mayhem and selling infants on the black market while in Florida; it must be a state law JEB Bush can’t expunge. The Science Fiction element of the story involves the possible direction cloning and biotechnology could go when you see Wade’s get-rich-quick scheme. That dovetails into what Right Wingers would brand the conspiracy segment of the story as Coupland’s characters explain why Big Pharma, the Biotech Industry and Big Insurance don’t want a cure for AIDS, cancer and other terminal illnesses; as one friend told me, these corporations and lawyers want to make sure they acquire everything you own before you painfully die.
With the heavier issues addressed in the story put aside, it is still a great book and the first one with an ending I sincerely liked. It didn’t feel sudden or sappy. He ended it at an appropriate point. Families is his best novel since Shampoo Planet, a snapshot of life in North America during early Nineties. This one is sadly engraved to be the story set several months before George Bush was suddenly elevated into an effective leader despite being a dunce for 40 years.
The novel’s best section contains Coupland’s biting commentary about why Daytona Beach exists (see page 176). To me the explanation Wade provided applies to so much of the US and Canada.
The author is spot on with the characters; they are very developed, well done and believable, one of his strongest traits as a writer. I envy Coupland’s ability to capture the anger of his characters through words. When I met him for the book signing on this, he turned out to be nothing like the people he writes about. He is more like his opinion pieces: calm, easy-going, polite and tells humorous anecdotes without excessive profanity (unlike James Ellroy).