Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Book review: All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland

[Read while waiting for appointments]

All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland

Coupland is generally easy reading for me, with rambling sentence structures that flow with the consciousness and ordinary seeming characters getting themselves into extraordinary relationships with each other and the world in general. He holds a mirror up to show the darkness of the world through those interactions.

This book didn’t flow so well for me, this time around. Largely, I think, because it was an intermittent companion, I lost the flow in the gaps between appointments.

It centres around the Drummond family, their coming to terms with terminal illness and the launching of their daughter in the Space Shuttle. It is set in and around Daytona Beach, near the launch site.

There are some elements of a road movie here, with a lot of action taking place on journeys, without there being any real structure to them except for their advancement of the plot.

Overall, a good read but, like all his work, rather disposable. Its fun during the reading, but dissipates once you close the back cover.


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