All Families are Psychotic - Douglas Coupland
All families are psychotic. At least, that's what the best-selling novelist and reluctant spokesman for a generation, Douglas Coupland, believes. Or at any rate, it's the title of his new book. In fact, he says that 'people are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's family. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.'
That's probably true. Although you have to exercise a degree of grace when it comes to the family in this book. Dysfunctional is an understatement, and you'd probably choose your own father anytime over Ted Drummond, the foul-mouthed low-life who dumps his wife Janet for a trophy blonde and one more shot at the good life.
Ted and Janet have three 'grown-up' children: Bryan, the suicidal, anti-globalisation-protesting depressive; Wade, the drop-out no-hoper with a big heart; and Sarah, 'a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash' - Ted's golden girl, who has been selected to pilot the Space Shuttle, despite losing an arm to Thalidomide.
The family - torn apart and plagued by HIV and cancer - assemble in Florida for Sarah's first flight into space... where a pulp-fiction plot gives them one last opportunity to kiss and make up.
As with previous Coupland novels, forgiveness, reconciliation and supernatural second chances feature heavily in the denouement. He symbolises the need for a divine solution to the troubled human condition through Janet's vain search for a life-saving man-made HIV drug. And he continues to voice his own strong desire for epiphany in a culture which has lost its sense of God, and is subject only to the forces of randomness.
In fact, most of his characters yearn for rebirth in some way - or at the very least, for the chance to have another go at living life better; yet the opportunity for a new start, for the new birth that is at the heart of the Gospel goes unconsidered. Reminiscent of Ecclesiastes - it's down to a lucky break and a miracle cure to finally offer some salvation.
In John 3, Nicodemus is taken aback by Jesus' call to be born again. Jesus rebukes him for his failure to recognise the need for a rebirth. Coupland, by contrast, acknowledges the need for new life and salvation from a source outside himself, but his search still hasn't brought him to Jesus in the dead of night. The question for the Church remains, why can't he, and the many, many people who identify with his influential books, look to our family, when we've had the answer all along?
Brian Draper
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