Author | Douglas Coupland |
---|---|
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Genre | Novel |
Publisher | Random House of Canada (Canada), Bloomsbury (UK) |
Publication date | 2001 |
Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
Pages | 279 pp (Fortieth anniversary edition) |
ISBN | 0-679-31140-8 (first edition, hardback) |
OCLC | 46702989 |
Preceded by | Miss Wyoming |
Followed by | Hey Nostradamus! |
All Families Are Psychotic is the seventh novel by Douglas Coupland, published in 2001. The novel is the fictional story of the dysfunctional Drummond family and their adventures on a trip to see their daughter's space shuttle launch.
The novel is the tale of the Drummond family from Vancouver gathering together to watch Sarah Drummond's space shuttle blast off at the Kennedy Space Center. The Drummonds are a group of misfits with a wide array of personal foibles and intricacies. The novel's plot is the tale of events that reunite the Drummond family after many years of estrangement.
Several plot points of the book include geriatric HIV, armed robbery, death in Walt Disney World, pharmaceutical drug lords, black market baby sales, Daytona Beach, and suicide attempts.
Early in the book the men of the family travel to nearby Walt Disney World where they receive a package destined for the Bahamas containing a letter written by Prince William stolen from Princess Diana's casket. The men start to travel to the Bahamas to deliver their package, but everything and anything happens to them on the way.
The novel is told in a similar style to Miss Wyoming , with many plot flashbacks. However, the focus in this novel is on the temporally linear plot.
The trigger for the book was Coupland's mother's discovery of the Internet, mirrored by Janet's discovery of the Internet in the text. [1]
"My mother discovered the internet about two years ago. She's got this really weird medical condition which only 150 people on the planet have and she's managed to get them all together. It's transformed her as a person, she got rid of all her old friends – they're boring, they don't care about what's happening – chucked out all her clothes, shops only Banana Republic and Gap now. She's always been an interesting person but now she's interested in the world again. Watching that transformation, obviously, is the trigger for this book." [1]
In Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs , the narrator says about his girlfriend: "All she'll say is they are psychotic, as if everybody else's family isn't."
The novel is one of Coupland's more popular. In its initial publication run, it was printed in two halves, glued back to back, so that one cover was upside down. The reader was forced, halfway through the novel, to turn the book upside down to continue reading. This quirk was eliminated on subsequent print runs, but the cover still retained this peculiar arrangement in some later printings.
The original British cover, which featured a woman in a rocket ship, caused Coupland some grief, as "it misportrays the book's contents and sort of . . . sends the wrong message out". [2] The original Canadian and American covers featured a Larry Sultan photograph of an older woman staring out a window through curtains.
In 2004, DreamWorks announced that a film version of All Families Are Psychotic would be released in 2006 or 2007. The project remains in development. Writer Mark Poirier was commissioned to adapt the screenplay from Coupland's novel, while Noam Murro was attached to direct. [3] [4]
Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888).
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, first published in 1993. It takes the form of a collection of short stories, written in either Scots, Scottish English or British English, revolving around various residents of Leith, Edinburgh who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are effectively addictions. The novel is set in the late 1980s and has been described by The Sunday Times as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent".
Girlfriend in a Coma is a novel by Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland. It was first published by HarperCollins Canada in 1998. The novel tells the story of a group of friends growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in the late 1970s. On the night of a teenage house-wrecking party, one of the protagonists, Karen, falls into a coma. More alarmingly, she seemed to expect it, having given her boyfriend, Richard, a letter detailing the vivid dreams of the future she had experienced and how she wanted to sleep for a thousand years to avoid that dystopia.
Hey Nostradamus! is a novel by Douglas Coupland centred on a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia and its aftermath. This is Coupland's most critically acclaimed novel. It was first published by Random House of Canada in 2003. The novel comprises four first-person narratives, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love, sex, religion, prayer and grief.
Rage of Angels is a novel by Sidney Sheldon published in 1980. The novel revolves around young attorney Jennifer Parker; as she rises as a successful lawyer, she gets into a series of ongoings that lead to intrigue with the mob and a rival attorney that promises to break her life's dreams. As the story progresses, the protagonist is romantically torn between a famous politician, who helps her rise again, and the Mafia boss who framed her. The boss swears to destroy her after he finds out about her affair with the politician and the child resulting from the affair.
Scarlett is a 1991 novel by Alexandra Ripley, written as a sequel to Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind. The book debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Spaulding Lewis is a fictional character from the CBS soap opera Guiding Light. The role was last portrayed by actress Emme Rylan from February 7, 2006 to September 18, 2009.
Eleanor Rigby is a 2004 novel by Douglas Coupland, about a lonely woman at ages 36 and 42. The novel is written as a first-person narrative by the main character, Liz Dunn. Its title is derived from the 1966 song of the same name by the Beatles.
Miss Wyoming is a novel by Douglas Coupland. It was first published by Random House of Canada in January 2000.
Patrick Drake is a fictional character on the ABC soap opera General Hospital, a protagonist in both seasons of its prime time SOAPnet spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift and one half of on-screen couple Patrick Drake and Robin Scorpio. Jason Thompson originated the role in 2005. From April 23 to 28, 2008, the role of Patrick Drake was played by Ethan Erickson while Thompson was having minor surgery. In October 2015, it was announced that Thompson will be departing from the show, last appearing on January 7, 2016.
Smart People is a 2008 American comedy-drama film starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Elliot Page, and Thomas Haden Church. The film was directed by Noam Murro, written by Mark Poirier and produced by Michael London, with Omar Amanat serving as executive producer. Smart People was filmed on location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, including several scenes at Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh International Airport. Premiering at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, North American distribution rights were acquired by Miramax Films and the film was released widely on April 11, 2008.
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist, designer, and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He has published thirteen novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. He is a columnist for the Financial Times and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux journal, Dis, and Vice. His art exhibits include Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything which was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and the Villa Stuck.
Generation A is the thirteenth novel from Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland. It takes place in a near future, in a world in which bees have become extinct. The novel is told with a shifting-frame narrative perspective, shifting between the novel's five main protagonists. The novel mirrors the style of Coupland's first novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which is also a framed narrative. On September 30, 2009, Generation A was announced as a finalist for The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize by The Writer's Trust of Canada.
Mixed Blessings, also known as Danielle Steel's Mixed Blessings, is a 1995 American made-for-television romantic drama film directed by Bethany Rooney. The film is based upon the 1993 novel of the same name written by Danielle Steel. It contains three stories of couples who are facing parenthood for the first time. Scott Baio, Bess Armstrong, Gabrielle Carteris, and Bruce Greenwood lead the all-star cast.
Diff'rent Strokes is an American television sitcom, which aired on NBC from November 3, 1978, to May 4, 1985, and on ABC from September 27, 1985, to March 7, 1986. The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, respectively, two African-American boys from Harlem taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman and widower, Phillip Drummond, for whom their deceased mother previously worked, and his daughter, Kimberly. During the first season and the first half of the second season, Charlotte Rae also starred, as Mrs. Edna Garrett, the Drummonds' first housekeeper, who ultimately spun off into her own sitcom, The Facts of Life, as a housemother at the fictional Eastland School. The second housekeeper, Adelaide Brubaker, was played by Nedra Volz. The third housekeeper, Pearl Gallagher, was played by Mary Jo Catlett, first appearing as a recurring character, later becoming a main cast member. The series made stars of Coleman, Bridges, and Plato and became known for the "very special episodes", in which serious issues such as racism, illegal drug use, alcoholism, hitchhiking, kidnapping, and child sexual abuse were dramatically explored.
Player One: What Is to Become of Us is a novel written by Douglas Coupland for the 2010 Massey Lectures. Each of the book's five chapters was delivered as a one-hour lecture in a different Canadian city: Vancouver on October 12, Regina on October 14, Charlottetown on October 19, Ottawa on October 25 and ending in Toronto on October 29. The lectures were broadcast on CBC Radio One's Ideas, November 8–12. The book was published by House of Anansi Press.
Sarah's Key is a historical fiction novel by Franco-British author Tatiana de Rosnay, first published in French as Elle s'appelait Sarah in September 2006. Two main parallel plots are followed through the book. The first is that of ten-year-old Sarah Starzynski, a Jewish girl born in Paris, who is arrested with her parents during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. Before they go, she locks her four-year-old brother in a cupboard, thinking the family should be back in a few hours. The second plot follows Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris, who is asked to write an article in honour of the 60th anniversary of the roundup.
Worst. Person. Ever. is the fourteenth novel by Douglas Coupland, published in 2013. The novel is the story of Raymond Gunt, an offensive and shocking narrator, and his journey from London through Los Angeles to Kiribati, an island in the Pacific Ocean, where he is to work on a reality television show. The novel focuses on this character's direct and inflammatory reflections on the world around him, and the characters he meets. In an interview with NPR, Coupland stated that the novel was written as an antidote to an "epidemic of earnestness", and that the book was motivated by the question, "Why not just go against a trend and write something that might actually damage a person's soul if they read it?"