Hey Nostradamus!

Readers of Douglas Coupland's more recent fictions have become accustomed to encountering characters touched by tragedy, whether it be falling into comas, surviving plane crashes or becoming infected with the AIDS virus after bizarre shooting incidents. Hey Nostradamus! is no exception: a novel in four voices. The opening narrator, Cheryl Anway, is the 17-year-old victim of a Columbine-style high-school massacre. Just before she was murdered in 1988, Cheryl had secretly married her high-school sweetheart Jason Klaasen and was expecting their child. The couple were part of a zealously evangelical Christian group, Youth Alive! whose members, immediately after the slaying, falsely accused Jason of masterminding the incident.

Eleven years later, Jason is still coming to terms with Cheryl's death. He is, as he admits to his faithful dog Joyce, a "social blank with a liver like the Hindenburg… embarrassed by how damaged he is and by how mediocre he turned out". (He fits bathrooms for a living.) Jason is also scarred by his relationship with his father Reg, a religious pedant so unyielding that he drove his wife into alcoholism and who genuinely believes that one of his identical twin grandsons cannot possess a soul.

Coupland persistently dissects notions of morality, faith, belief, forgiveness and devotion here. Even Reg, who leads the very final section of the story, is a multifaceted figure whose religiosity is handled with a surprising degree of compassion. Loss, however, is the main theme, exemplified by the fact that its two main characters are absent presences. Cheryl is dead throughout and by the time Heather, Jason's new partner, takes up the narrative, Klaasen has himself disappeared. His vanishing act forces her to engage Allison, the book's dubious Nostradamus; she is a fake psychic intent on ripping Heather off, yet mysteriously in possession of cannily specific "messages" from Jason.

The book's structure, epistolatory in parts, can make the story appear unfocused; some sections certainly err toward the frenetic, incident-wise, but Coupland's tremendous wit, humanity and moral force carry it along. As ever, splutters of dates and pop trivia mingle with profound reflections on life and death; surely, only Coupland nowadays could mark the time of day with a reference to McDonalds breakfasts and pull it off. That said, there's a very slight harking back to Life After God--the cartoon characters that Heather and Jason invent do seem rather similar to Doggles, the Dog who wore Goggles, and Squirrelly the Squirrel. Nonetheless, where those stories were about the "first generation raised without religion" this moving, prescient novel takes a long hard look at those who choose God, or have God thrust upon them. --Travis Elborough

View other editions of Hey Nostradamus!.
View books by Douglas Coupland.

Bit of a curveball from Coupland - Rated
Hey Nostradamus was quite different from all of Douglas Coupland's other book that I had previously read. If you're looking for another Generation X, Microserfs, etc then leave this book for the time being but do go back to it when you're in the mood for a more thoughtful and reflective Coupland.

Inspired (perhaps that's not the most appropriate word), by the events at Colombine High and more specifically, the case of one victim who reportedly refused to deny her Faith when asked by the killers to reject God, this is an interesting look at what that young girl's life might have been like leading up to the shootings.

In the aftermath of the shootings, the media, and to a similar extent the US nation, sought to make a martyr out of this girl, perhaps as a need to make sense or salvage some good from the event. The more sceptical questioned the initial accounts of the incident, resulting in considerable doubt on how the conversation between the killers and their victim actually transpired.

Coupland seems to take up this idea and writes the story of an ordinary Vancouver schoolgirl who just happens to be present in the cafeteria when a school shooting unfolds. How the event is interpreted by those in the community questions the real life incidents at Colombine and battles against the alleged media-created martyrdom. My take on it is that Coupland challenges the idea that there is often more value in the idea of how something than how it actually happened. Richard III and Boris Gudunov were probably not the evil prince-killers that Shakespeare and Pushkin portrayed them to be but we have accepted that in their cases, the myth is more valuable than historic truth. Hey Nostradamus suggests that Coupland disagrees.


Good stuff.

Best book I've ever read - Rated
Wow, what an incredible book! It brought me to tears, shocked me, made me smile, gave me every possible emotion. I have never been drawn so much into a book and been physically unable to put it down.

5 stars is not enough for this book - Rated
This was the first Coupland book I'd read - it is amazing. Like some of the other reviewers I now recommend it to everyone who asks 'read anything good lately'. I am resisting giving too much detail on the plot as it will draw you in slowly and then, in the final chapter, it will spit you out, reeling as your brain comes to comprehend the hurt felt by one of the characters in a scene with such strong spiritual overtones that anyone with a heart will weep.

A great read - with a surprise - Rated
This book is on a par with some of Coupland's best. I enjoy reading his books, and understanding where he's coming from is part of the pleasure. A book that satisfies yet leaves you wanting more is a rare treat.

The surprise? The back of the book contains some "extras", like DVD's have. There are notes on the book by Coupland himself & bio. details. I like the fact the publisher went to the trouble to do this.

Beautiful! - Rated
I realised the greatness of Coupland's work once again in this highly emotive and beautifully written book that should be on everybodys wish list.

What were people's conclusions on Reg? What an interesting character...