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All Families are Psychotic

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 7,443 ratings · 343 reviews

The most disastrous family reunion in the history of fiction.

The Drummond family, reunited for the first time in years, has gathered near Cape Canaveral to watch the launch into space of their beloved daughter and sister, Sarah. Against the Technicolor unreality of Florida's finest tourist attractions, the Drummonds stumble into every illicit activity under the tropical su

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published September 7th 2002 by Bloomsbury USA (first published September 15th 2001)

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Feb 22, 2009 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

At first I thought it was not going to be a wise decision to pick this book up right after I finished Crime and Punishment. I was right. I was annoyed. How could I possibly read witty banter when Lizaveta was killed with an ax? How about reading slap-sticky fight scenes between a father and son when dear Rodya was living the hard-labor life in Siberia? That’s not even to mention how absurdly over-the-top the entire family and all of the peripheral characters were. An eccentric billionaire obsess...more

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Jan 07, 2013 E rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

A comedic caper that zips through misery after misery at a mile-a-minute and crashes into chunks of truth at every corner. I was tempted to take a star away on account of the characters being a bit too simplified and amplified for my taste (or credulity), but the story itself is ludicrous on purpose and I had a good time, so why punish anyone? The family's inner monologues and observations aren't the deepest musings ever put to paper, but every time I found the over-the-top action getting to be...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Rob rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: someone that hates themself

Shelves: 2007

Argh. This book was maddening. Coming off the heels of Generation X and Microserfs, I suppose my expectations were pretty high but this really felt like the literary equivalent of bottoming out.

With All Families Are Pyschotic, Douglas Coupland thrusts us into this absurdly over-the-top comically dismal present tense-ish Florida that just doesn’t ever seem to come together. It’s unreliably realistic that’s as much a future-proofed snapshot Now as it is an immediately dated fantasy of yesterday...more

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Jul 05, 2008 Stephanie rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was a quick and easy read, but I started to lose interest once I got a little more than half in. It's billed as kind of a humorous tale, and there were some "ha!" moments. But overall, it wasn't funny.... it was really pretty horrible (the goings ons). So an interesting and compelling overall story (of the family), but there wasn't much meat to it (too much back and forth dialogue for me) -- I also felt somewhat disconnected from the characters, and the story, although lacking meat, didn't...more

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Sep 28, 2007 Dennis rated it 1 of 5 stars

Try as I did, I just couldn't get into this book. I've been a fan of Douglas Coupland since Generation X came out, so in some strange way, I feel bad not finishing this book. His other books have been pretty solid, though. "All Families", however, was a big disappointment for me. It has been awhile since I've read his work. Am I getting to old to enjoy sardonic, at times slapstick and dark humor? yeah,I don't think so. It's not me, it's him.

It felt as though I was reading a book rather than bein...more

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Mar 01, 2013 I Am Vertical rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Qualche anno fa un mio amico mi aveva detto: "C'ho gli amici che escono di testa ad ogni nuova uscita di Murakami. Io non so. A me ha sempre dato l'idea di un giapponese che vive da trent'anni in America, ovviamente con cittadinanza americana."

Da allora ho letto cinque, forse sei suoi romanzi.
So bene - se voglio leggere di Giappone, del Giappone, sul Giappone - quali sono gli scrittori che possono soddisfarmi o quantomeno incuriosirmi a riguardo.
Anche se devo dire che, in Murakami, elementi d...more

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Mar 01, 2012 Carlos rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'll be honest; I didn't finish this one. I only bought it because I was picking up 'American Psycho' (at a friend's recommendation) and someone standing in the section told me if I liked Ellis, I should check out 'All Families are Psychotic'. This might be the first and last time I buy a book a stranger recommends.

The structure and plot were fine, I suppose, but I love dialogue, and this book's dialogue seemed...forced? I won't go back and pick sections, but the character interactions just were...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Courtney rated it 1 of 5 stars

I rarely ever say that I dislike a book to the point of hatred, but this one makes me come pretty close. (Even if it is irrational.)

I picked it up because the synopsis sounded interesting, it still does, and that's where it got me. Nothing happens for the longest time in the novel and anything that does is just the most depressing bullshit ever and entirely unrealistic and absurd to boot.

I mean, can we talk about how a certain disease was given to a mother from her son? I almost put the book dow...more

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Dec 05, 2009 RandomAnthony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well, for that matter, what was the purpose of my first sixty-five years? Maybe the act of wanting to live and being given life is the only thing that matters. Forget the mountain of haikus I can write now. Forget learning to play the cello or slaving away for charity. But then what?

Yes, then what, exactly? All Families Are Psychotic is the third (and second best) Coupland novel I’ve read this year (and I would have never picked up the author’s work without goodreads so, um, thanks, Otis and Co....more Well, for that matter, what was the purpose of my first sixty-five years? Maybe the act of wanting to live and being given life is the only thing that matters. Forget the mountain of haikus I can write now. Forget learning to play the cello or slaving away for charity. But then what?

Yes, then what, exactly? All Families Are Psychotic is the third (and second best) Coupland novel I’ve read this year (and I would have never picked up the author’s work without goodreads so, um, thanks, Otis and Co.). The novel revolves around the exploits of a supremely fucked up family converging on Florida to witness and celebrate the “good” daughter’s accomplishments. The Drummonds’ Jerry Springer-worthy history never stops, really, and the remarriages, bad blood, and simmering avoidances spill over around the matriarch’s illness and clear, somber reflection on her existence.

Coupland’s outlandish dues ex machina habits recur in this book (for chrissakes, main characters run into each other at random fast food restaurants) but the preposterous developments feel as if they nearly could be real in the wake of the Drummonds’ bonkers behavior. And Coupland’s gift, his ability to take mundane and flat-out depressing scenarios and piece together bits of authentic hope and meaning from the sparse resources, is present as well. Listen. None of Coupland’s characters are likely to die in African war camps or live in third world squalor or even a ghetto tenement. They’re more likely to exist in faded, dispiriting apartment complexes and take the bus to shitty jobs as telemarketers or counter help acutely aware that they’ve made some seriously damaged choices and the road back to happiness is either going to take a whole lot of fucking work or some miraculous Zen reframing of surrounding conditions. And that, I think, is a feeling to which most of us, on some level, can relate. And even if we dodge a higher percentage of the “bad decision” bullets, well, as Coupland says, then what, exactly? Does that make better people? Are many of us just as dispirited but in better residences and slightly more expensive shoes? Coupland explores these questions around a curious mix of the recognizable (anonymous hotel rooms, interstate strip malls) and the borderlands of magical realism (untouchable but rather friendly drug dealers and the twisted paths of seemingly predestined bullets).

Florida, by the way, is a main character. The hazy, oppressive heat and pervasive sense of decay inherent in the location (sorry, Ben!) become both the novel’s backdrop and part of the atmosphere. I hate alligators and temperatures above eighty. I fucking hate Florida. But I only visit for family and professional conferences so perhaps my judgment is unfair. I don’t care.

So I’d return to Coupland, sure. I don’t love his work but he’s carved a reasonable niche to which I could return when I needed something quick, insightful, and easy to read but not all that light. I don’t see other authors covering this terrain as well as Coupland. Life After God next, maybe, but not for a while.

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Feb 04, 2013 Hazel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I would love to be able to see inside Douglas Coupland's head. It must be crazy in there given the themes he comes up with for his books. After reading and not really liking his book, Miss Wyoming, I thought I would give this author one last chance. This book was just insane. It is a book that you really need to be in the mood to read and one where you can suspend some logic and reality to find enjoyable. It was funny in a lot of places but was almost just too much to be believable and to really...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Jasmine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian

This is a good book.

I'm going to say something weird, it's really similar to the history of love by nichole krauss, but better. I know right? I probably never would have thought of it if I wasn't reading/listening to them at the same time.

But this book is also a bit like jackass goes to the prom. Or richie rich takes a slum day.

The quotes on the back say things like: "douglas coupland all growed up"

this book is not all growed up, in fact it's a fairly juvenile book. But lets actually be stra...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Pauline rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: male-author-challenge-2013

What's this book about?

It's about family, I think anyone can recognize himself in this book. The family's adventures are, ofcourse, a bit over the top. But that's also what makes it funny, it has a sort of dark humour. On one side you could start to cry with all the misery they go through, but on the other hand it's hilarious.
It's written to the point, it's written funny. The family keeps walking in the most unexpected events and misery.They keep going with confidence they'll just make it home...more

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Mar 16, 2008 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dude-lit, popular

Great little read. I finished in a weekend, because there was a humorous, unforeseeable detail around every corner. While some dialogue seemed forced or hokey every now and then, and some of the flashbacks were overwrought, the main story moved at a brisk pace and was highly original. The ending was a slight disappointment, but an overall great work of modern fiction. It has reclaimed the surname Drummond from "Diff'rent Strokes," at least for me.

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Feb 08, 2012 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 1 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: Gerri's Gift

Shelves: contemporary, fiction, humor-and-comedy, literary-fiction, novels

Despite a decent prose style, this was one of those books where I pulled out before fifty pages, because I just didn't find the characters and situations believable enough to invest time and caring upon. We learn before we reach ten pages that Sarah Drummond, a thalidomide baby with one hand, is a NASA astronaut. Not just a mission specialist mind you--and that alone would have been hard enough to buy--but the pilot of the space shuttle mission about to launch. Soon after that, we learn that "as...more

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Jul 21, 2009 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Meet Wade. Wade seems to have a way of wrecking everything around him. For instance, "accidentally" sleeping with his father's new wife and giving her AIDS. And then "accidentally" giving his mother AIDS as well, when his father shoots him for the whole sleeping with his wife thing, and the bullet passes through Wade's AIDS-infested body and and rests neatly in his mother.

Wade isn't exactly doing so hot lately. But then, neither are the rest of his family. His white picket fence mother has a se...more

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Jun 21, 2009 Ben Babcock rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-read, canadian-author, humour, own

Despite its rather rambling plot, I actually have a soft spot for All Families are Psychotic. It has something to do with the zaniness of the characters being so realistic. And the ending always chokes me up.

As the title implies, the book's about family and the tribulations one's family undergoes as the wheel turns and one generation supplants another. Yet it's also about all the motifs surrounding family: growing up, maturity, dealing with mortality, and realizing how screwed up the world actua...more Despite its rather rambling plot, I actually have a soft spot for All Families are Psychotic. It has something to do with the zaniness of the characters being so realistic. And the ending always chokes me up.

As the title implies, the book's about family and the tribulations one's family undergoes as the wheel turns and one generation supplants another. Yet it's also about all the motifs surrounding family: growing up, maturity, dealing with mortality, and realizing how screwed up the world actually is. Douglas Coupland doesn't pull any punches when he depicts the Drummond family, but I won't try to summarize each character with a one-line description. I'd just end up making them sound like stereotypes, and they aren't.

Where All Families Are Psychotic excels, more so than some of Coupland's other books, is sandwiching pithy observations about life in between the actions of the book's characters and the consequences of those actions. The Gum Thief didn't do nearly as well in this respect. Coupland has some very valid observations about life, and by having two generations of adults in this novel, he can explore the shift in attitudes toward life between the 1950s and the 21st century. Janet Drummond, past middle age and wondering what the hell she's done with her life, is finally breaking free of her housewife shell and becoming a person. Her children, on the other hand, are all discovering they're unhappy with who they are right now, that their identities have been subsumed in favour of their roles in society.

Chronic and terminal conditions play a large role in All Families Are Psychotic, as almost every member of the Drummond family has one. Janet and Wade (and later, Wade's stepmother, Nickie) have HIV/AIDS. Ted has liver cancer (although we don't learn that until the very end). Sarah was born without a left hand as a result of Janet's use of thalidomide. Interestingly enough, the third Drummond child, Bryan, lacks any sort of outright condition. This is fitting for Bryan's character, however, since he lacks any sort of life. As Janet observes, Bryan, even as an adult, is still a child.

These chronic conditions help define the Drummonds but don't encapsulate them. The struggle to determine an identity beyond one's medical condition is a huge part of the book, but unlike some "inspirational" literature, Coupland never tries to make it sappy. There's a twist near the end concerning Janet, Wade, and Nickie's HIV status, but this is, after all, a work of fiction. Coupland uses the twist to ask questions we don't always ask ourselves.

All Families Are Psychotic is nothing if character-driven, yet almost all of the characters are actually devices rather than people. Take Florian, for example, a Wizard-type whose money and affluence allows him to do anything he wants. Coupland has a habit of introducing such omnipotent characters into his novels--take Kam Fong or even Douglas Coupland, both from JPod, as an example. He does this for two reasons: firstly, because everyone loves an omnipotent badass; and secondly, because they let him crank up the absurd to eleven.

Coupland sprinkles his novels with absurdity like it's a cherished condiment, and that only improves the tone of his writing: cheekily irreverent, because he's not trying to make your heart bleed or your eyes water (even though this is often the end result). He's trying to shock and amuse, to create an instant catharsis. And that's what I appreciate so much about All Families Are Psychotic: it manages to be deliciously outrageous and incredibly accurate all at the same time.(less)

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Oct 27, 2011 Julia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: hip, canadian

This could be a phantastic script for a Quentin-Tarantino-roadmovie which I'd probably enjoy quite much for the 90 minutes a regular film takes. Unfortunately Coupland's writing didn't work for me at all - the constant dialogue got tiring quite soon, the characters never really came alive for me and I found some of the turns of the story just too random to be true. How can it be that the family keeps running into each other every five minutes in the most unbelievable places? And they're all just...more

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Aug 31, 2009 Snotchocheez rated it 4 of 5 stars

"All Families Are Psychotic" is a farce that explores dysfunctionality in modern families. The story (such that it is, given its farcical quality) is beyond believable; some of its characters include a thalidomide-baby (deprived of one arm) who grows up and becomes an astronaut, a sibling who unknowingly has sex with his step-mother after he meets her in a bar for the first time (and who is shot by his father after said dalliance), four (FOUR!) members of this same family who are HIV+ because of...more

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Mar 24, 2009 Karen Hansen rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was dreadful. I really liked "Microserfs" and was excited about reading another Douglas Coupland novel. The plot is so outlandish, that it is difficult to become emersed in the story. It was almost like the book was weird for the sake of being weird.

I also could not get a clear mental picture of any of the characters. They seemed to contradict themselves and their reactions to their environment and each other. I didn't feel that they were fully developed.

One bit that irked me, was the...more

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May 07, 2012 Dannymanitoba rated it 4 of 5 stars

Coupland has been compared to Palahniuk in regards to his style of modern disenchantment. Coupland has the same sparkle in starts and stops. The imagery is there and the style is occasionally comparable. However, Palahniuk has lately gone to post-modern extremes, beginning with Haunted and exploding with Rant, which seems an assault on biography a la Flaubert's Parrot by Barnes. Coupland is much more readable, and doesn't leave you with that icky, sticky depression you get after Palahniuk's gros...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Natalia Pì rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nice book with a great title, my second Douglas Coupland.
I appreciate Coupland's ability to portray the lives of these middle-aged or older mums, and how they must feel after their children are gone and grown up, how their lives and their perspective change, how difficult it must be to adjust, especially for a generation of women who were taught to put family before all else. He does this with great sensitivity. It's thought provoking, and it might make you want to call your own mother to tell h...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin added it

I suppose it's wrong of me to review/rate this on the strength of just 60 pages (ish) but I wanted to place on record how utterly dreary this book is. There's this "rich cast of characters" who are introduced far too briefly to distinguish between, all of them having a characteristic quirk (like a girlfriend with a vowelless name "Shw") but none of them having a distinctive voice so you just can't keep track of them. Several of the characters seemingly have AIDS, some are addicts of some sort or...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Lindsay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Coupland creates the most fantastical characters and scenarios in his literature. The Drummond Family makes you want to scream at times due to their incredible amount of follies. The fact that Ted (the father) had a drug problem and left his wife of many years for a trophy wife and then shot their son for sleeping with his new wife which only in turn led to giving his ex-wife (Janet, the matriarch) HIV. Whew! That makes me feel nauseated just thinking about it.

I won't spoil the rest of the scre...more

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Jul 20, 2010 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Another great page-turner from an author I think of as 'Palahniuk lite'. There are the usual heavy topics (AIDS, cancer, birth defect) and everyman-type characters (divorced mom, ne'er do well son, overachieving daughter). The author's powers of plot twisting were amazing and lots of fun to watch unwind. It was a good reminder to keep an eye out for more from Coupland at the used book store when I need a good airplane read. I tried to quiet the voice in my head that kept saying "no one really ta...more

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May 31, 2011 Samantha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

Not too bad...

This book was about a severely disfunctional family. All of the family members have some sort of severe medical condition ranging from HIV, AIDS, Cancer to suicidal tendencies. The story follows the family meeting in Florida for their daughters first trip into space. (She is a one handed astronaut) The father is broke so the con artist son takes a job with a former employer to scam some money from an extremely rich man. The other son's pregnant girlfriend is planning to sell the ba...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Jenni added it

279 pages, starts to get interesting around page 216, and even meaningful around 263. If you can stick around long enough for that, or really enjoy outrageous exaggeration- this books for you.

At first I thought the reason I liked Night Journey (The first book Ive reviewed for facebook) was its sensational content. After reading All Families are Psychotic, I realize that I can tell (at least, a little) between good and bad writing. I not entirely plot driven.

Not that theres anything wrong with...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Miike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is less alternative than some other books by Coupland, which means it is probably more accessible. It reads like a black comedy and manages to condense the multitude of modern maladies into one dysfunctional family. In this case it is the family of astronaut Sarah Drummond. I'm guessing Coupland chose an astronaut because they are supremely healthy beings both mentally and physically. This contrast is ironic and witty and I enjoyed reading about the rest of the Drummond family unravelling o...more

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Apr 27, 2010 Kiah rated it 4 of 5 stars

A really quick, really enjoyable adventure with the Drummond family, who are really no more psychotic than any "normal" family, they just seem to have been hit with a few more of life's whammies than most. Mix those whammies together with a ridiculous money-making scheme involving a letter Prince William wrote to his deceased mother, and you have quite the tale of family love, hate and the ability to come together in the most trying (or most completely ridiculous) times. I loved this tale, as yo...more

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Sep 06, 2009 Alex rated it 3 of 5 stars

This one goes a bit too far out there at times. Coupland has been slipping of late... there are flashes here that speak of something better than average that might have been. I keep waiting for his triumphant return to quality. The chops seems to be in working order... it's the authorial decision making that isn't up to snuff.

My friends who like this one a lot all identify strongly with the family disfunction portrayal. For the most part that is well done here.
My system: 5 stars= Read it 3= On...more

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About Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland is Canadian, born on a Canadian Air Force base near Baden-Baden, Germany, on December 30, 1961. In 1965 his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. Coupland has studied art and design in Vancouver, Canada, Milan, Italy and Sapporo, Japan. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and sever...more

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“All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.” — 110 people liked it

“...blame is just a lazy person's way of making sense of chaos. ” — 84 people liked it

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