The Novel*: All Families are Psychotic-Douglas Coupland
The Song: Of Montreal-Psychotic Feeling (via Fluxblog a while back)

Douglas Coupland, once again, and this family and novel is bizzare. Everything that could go wrong for each of them goes wrong, and the insane characters fall into even worse, inexplicable situations. The family is trying to get together for the first time in a long time to celebrate their only successful, one handed daughter/sister Sarah, who's about to be blasted off into space. Most of the family has some sort of fatal disease, and embarks on a dizzying quest to, uh, deliver the genuine letter from Prince Williams to Princess Diana. As before, Coupland's characters are wild and unpredictable, each with a personality that threatens to explode and eat away the pages.

There's plenty of dark humor and scenes of dialogue that sticks out, but the situations the family manages to get themselves into are enough of a treat (for instance: the mother of the family has HIV from her son when her crazy ex-husband tried to shoot her son, the bullet passing through the son, hitting her, and transferring the disease). It's a fast paced, action filled, surprising novel with plenty of fun.

And of course, Of Montreal seems the only suitable band with this glittering, shiny piece of indie pop space fantasy. The echos of the chorus, and the non stop squealing, circling guitars...the psychodelic riffs and love sick lyrics...amazing.

*New format for the book talks! Just to keep those of you who could not care less about books entertained, now (hopefully) every completed novel shall also feature a song!