All Families Are Psychotic
¶ by Rob Friesel
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 Psychotic: A Novel, 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’s tomorrow.
Sure, there are a few choice lines but every time it seems like it is starting to ramp up, we discover that he is feeding us a false start. It was like vintage GenX-era Coupland was rearing his head every 10 pages or so, about to start the novel only to find that he had lapsed into … I don’t know, some feeble attempt at co-opting Oprah’s book club. It was like reading a book that hemorrhaged interest and the further I got, the more desperate I became to enjoy it. By page 201, I had my enthusiam defibrillator paddles out and was shocking myself. Clear! *BZZZT!* Is it good yet? No? Clear!
I suppose I am not sure what else to say about this one. The surreal nihilism of Generation X overlaid on the mortality subject matter? Mushroom clouds instead of pill caddies? Was I looking for Microserfs‘ sensitive onion layers of humanity trying on some new clothes? Costco lamentations instead of preposterous bullet wounds to the liver?
The mind reels.
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