I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MARIA TAYLOR-Tiny Desk Concert #19 (June 29, 2009).

I’d never heard of Maria Taylor before this Tiny Desk Concert.  She was part of the duo Azure Ray (who I also don’t know).  Then she went solo and as of this recording has released three albums.

Taylor has a pleasant voice (she reminds me of a number of different Lilith Fair singers, although I can’t pinpoint who specifically), but it’s not especially remarkable.  The first song “Ladyluck” I found to be nice.  The second song “Time Lapse Lifeline” fared better–the guitar melody was a little stronger, and the harmonies really helped.

The final track, “Clean Getaway” is another pretty gentle ballad (the two guitars really help add texture to all of these songs).  Although even the end seemed to just stop without actually ending.

I didn’t find Maria Taylor to be terribly memorable.  However, the Tiny Desk setting seems to be the best way to hear Taylor as her voice is well suited for an intimate location.

[READ: January 17, 2014] All Families Are Psychotic

I saw recently that Douglas Coupland had a new book coming out in 2014.  And I also knew that I had three of his older novels to re-read, so I decided to make this the Winter of Douglas Coupland and read all three of those books before his new one came out.  Then I got to work and saw his new book on top of a pile of newly delivered titles.  Sigh.

Well, there was still no reason I couldn’t read the other three in a row, possibly even before anyone wanted his new book.  So, off I went.  And indeed, I finished this book on our little vacation.  And even though I’m fairly certain I’ve read it before (it came out just before or after 9/11/01, gasp) I didn’t remember a thing about it.

This book has a title that I’m mixed about.  It’s a great sentence, but I’m not sure it’s a great title.  And although someone speaks the title in the book, it doesn’t really explain the book very well.

In fact it’s pretty hard to explain the book quickly.

The book is very dark—with death and doom looming everywhere.  The book is about the Drummond family (I assume it’s a nod to Diff’rent Strokes, although there are no similarities between the families).  The Drummond family had three children—Wade, Bryan and Sarah.  Sarah was born last and because of her mother’s use of thalidomide, she was born missing a hand (did people really use thalidomide that recently?  Shudder).  Sarah is an astronaut with NASA.  She is super smart and her low body weight certainly helped in NASA’s decision.  Bryan has always been a depressed kid and has tried to kill himself a few times.

And then there’s Wade.  While the book is about the whole family, Wade surfaces as the central figure and plot-mover.  Wade and his father fought all the time, with his father calling him useless almost daily.  And so Wade began to act up.  And the whole thing became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Wade moved out early and never had a stable life.

And the mom and dad got divorced, of course.  With the dad meeting and marrying  young woman and the mom living by herself.

Cut to the present.  The kids are grown and Sarah is about to go up into space, so the family is in Florida for the launch.  Most of them have not seen each other in years.

But in the intervening years there were a couple of incidents that have really set the tone for the family.  Wade contracted HIV but wasn’t aware of it.  He returned home on a stop over and wound up hooking up with a young hottie in a bar.  Shortly after, he finds out that the young hottie is his dad’s new wife.  When the dad realizes what happened he freaks out.  So Wade goes to his mother’s house to wait out the rage.  But the dad shows up with a gun and shoots Wade.  The bullet passes through Wade’s liver and into his mother.  Both survive, but she is now also HIV positive.  That’s how Wade discovers he has it as well.  And so does his dad’s new wife.

The book has a lot of HIV/AIDS fear which I think may have been an accurate portrayal of the time, but it seems a little oddly handled.  There are a number of scenes in which the mother deals with her disease calmly and even humorously, but the way they contracted it is odd and so atypical.

Interestingly, Coupland has said that the inspiration for the book came from his mother’s discovery of the internet.  Janet Drummond does a lot of research into her condition and becomes uncomfortably (to her sons) conversant with Internet…stuff.

Bryan turns up with a new girlfriend named Shw [sic] and the origins of her name and abrasive personality are pretty funny.  Shw is pregnant and is threatening to abort the baby (she’s not very nice to Bryan) but really she plans to sell the baby to a family in Florida.

And Susan’s husband is having an affair with the wife of a fellow astronaut (while that astronaut is planning a special sexual treat with Susan).  I enjoyed the way that the perfect astronaut family was contrasted with the Drummonds.

So the Drummonds are all hurting for money.  And that’s when Florian comes in.  Wade used to do “favors” for Florian.  Everyone assumes that means drug running, but Florian is actually in legal drugs—he runs a pharmaceutical company.  Although the things Wade did were not strictly legal—like acquiring dolphins for experimentation and the like.  So Florian gets into the picture through another convoluted subplot that I won’t even get into.

Despite Florian’s connections (and his violent bluster), he hits it off with Janet (again, through another convoluted set of circumstances).  Janet and Florian go out for dinner where Florian reveals that he can help all of the sick people in her family.  And that’s when it gets really surreal.

And it gets super surreal when we learn about the people Shw was going to sell her baby too (they have a dungeon in their basement).  And gets even more surreal when Shw and Bryan come back on the scene with guns.  So, the second half of the story is high adrenaline and quite different from the beginning.

And the ending ties things up in a somewhat neat but ultimately very-suspension-of-disbelief-heavy circumstances.

When I described the story to Sarah she said it sounded too weird for her.  And it’s very weird.  Between the heist and NASA and the dungeon and the diseases, it really felt like Coupland was throwing everything he could at the story.  And I liked it for that outlandishness of it (and was impressed that Coupland could think of so many different things happening).  This has also proven to be one of his more popular books.

There was talk of making this into a movie, but nothing has come of it.