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Fiction. Some books seem meant to be read aloud. Coupland's is one. HEY NOSTRADAMUS! cycles through four narrations by distinctly different characters. Well acted and well cast, the book journeys through the minds of high school lovers caught in a Columbine-style crossfire and its shattering aftermath: Cheryl, speaking from beyond the grave; Jason, her secret spouse and classmate; Heather, who loves the adult Jason with desperate abandon; and Reg, Jason's fundamentalist and fundamentally mad father. We catapult forward in time and meander through lives and experiences marred by shock, psychic torture, and deception. A tone of religious fervor underlies each character's voice, as the story moves from obsession to apathy to superstition and, ultimately, epiphany. D.J.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2004 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine. HTML: In 1988, a catastrophic episode of teen violence shatters a suburban community. HEY NOSTRADAMUS follows the aftermath in various voices across two decades: the teenage victims whose ordinary preoccupations with sex and spirituality will never evolve past that moment; the parents whose exposure to their children's underground world threatens their deepest convictions; and those who come to know the survivors only later in life, unable to fully realize what really transpired. HEY NOSTRADAMUS wrestles with religion and nihilism, sorrow and acceptance. It will take you to a place you didn't know existed..… (more)
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The novel manages to explore dark themes while being a
The beginning of the novel is captivating: in a high school in Vancouver in 1988, three students go on a shooting rampage, killing many of their peers. Seventeen-year-old student Cheryl, recently married and, even more recently, pregnant, is the final victim of the shootings. Her student husband Jason arrives in time to see her die.
A strength of the book for me is that the story is told in four sections by four different characters: firstly Cheryl, whose engaging voice and sweet musings on the world provide the background for the initial tragedy. The second part of the story has us meeting up with her husband, Jason, eleven years after the massacre where he leads a sad, unconventional existence. Dealing with both the death of his young wife as well as his tough upbringing under the rule of his religious tyrant father, Jason is struggling to keep his head above water. He conveys his story to us through a letter written to his twin nephews, and as we follow his life we are certainly taken down a few roads we weren’t expecting. In part three we are introduced to Heather, who begins dating Jason twelve years after the massacre. Heather is an endearing character going slowly crazy trying to piece together the puzzle that is Jason. The final, short, section of the book is told by Jason’s father, Reg. He attempts to explain, too late, his religious fanaticism and what was behind the way he treated those close to him. Through each character’s telling of the story we learn more about the other characters too.
Hey Nostradamus! explores in detail the idea of faith, where it can take you and what happens when it unravels. It also explores loneliness, what it’s like to try to be part of life but not quite able to exist in the world as everyone else does. Possibly there are lucky people who can’t relate to this, but I can. Heather’s character particularly reminded me of certain stages of my own life. The characters all rang true for me, and I had tears in my eyes more than once.
I found this book to be well written and an absolute page-turner – the kind of book you can’t wait to get home to read. Judging by this novel, Coupland’s mind works in ways different to most and I look forward to reading more of what he has come up with.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5
Highly recommended
Cheryl
Cheryl is our first narrator. She is 17, secretly married and pregnant. This created my first problem. Why on earth was she secretly married? There did not appear to be any Romeo and Juliet style situation going on; she hadn’t been pregnant before they got married. It seemed to come down to sex: having undergone a conversion to Christianity in order to sink her claws into fellow teen Jason, Cheryl insists that they marry before ‘doing the dirty’. I felt that this was a rather ridiculous plotline, but perhaps my resistance was more due to my lack of contact with genuine religious conviction in my day to day life than a flaw in Coupland’s storytelling. I imagine that there are areas in America, and indeed elsewhere, where this would seem perfectly feasible.
My second issue was even more personal: she’s dead. Gradually, interspersed with an account of an otherwise largely ordinary day, Cheryl reveals the events on the day of her death. In 40 odd pages she reflects upon her relationships with family, friends and her husband. Fine. Fair enough. But she also hears prayers, other people struggling to come to terms with the massacre. She is in some nebulous place where she is privileged to hear only prayers and curses. Well, this kind of fiction simply isn’t for me. Cheryl irritated me. Hugely. She was unambitious and manipulative. She accepted death.
And yet. On reflection, she was honest and was looking back over her life critically, examining ‘the big themes’ – love, faith, grief. It may be that other readers, of a more patient disposition than myself, actually find this section of the novel quite interesting. I don’t believe in purgatory and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief, so I felt quite ‘out of touch’ in this section.
Jason
Jason’s narrative is given the most space in the book, running to just over 100 pages. Despite the years that have passed, his opening words refer to the massacre and it quickly becomes apparent why: he has never escaped it. This is a logical and yet sad development; I found it convincing and quite interesting to read about the impact that it had on his life. I quickly felt that his voice was distinctive and that his perspective was more interesting than Cheryl’s.
Jason’s memories of Cheryl, his parents and the massacre are gradually unravelled and paint quite a dark picture of life. I found the characterisation initially convincing, especially in recounting Jason’s relationship with his rather difficult father, who is an exceedingly literal minded Christian. Their arguments are at once surreal and spot on: this is how families wind each other up. This felt like a better section of the novel to me because I could engage realistically with the material.
However. Gradually, it transpires that he is writing a letter to his nephews, which started to feel distinctly odd as the content became more and more unusual, and not the sort of thing one would normally reveal to family. By the close of Jason’s narrative, I was shocked by the ridiculous plot developments, which I felt to be utterly unconvincing, and left rather cold by Jason’s perspective on life. On the one hand, I felt I could see that Coupland wanted to present Jason as damaged and for the reader to empathise with him, but I was unable to do so when his life slid so far out of kilter.
Heather
Heather was the character I identified with the most, which I found interesting because she was most tangentially connected to the massacre and the most ‘normal’ (in so far as that word is ever appropriate). I found Heather to be a very sympathetic character and felt that she had the most engaging ‘voice’ in the collection of voices Coupland develops. I identified in particular with her view on relationships, that the successful ones were based on banter and a shared understanding rather than sex.
Heather has been dating Jason, which seems to imply that he has made progress, but the inner world they create together suggests a desire to disengage with reality altogether and create something they can control. Of course, life doesn’t allow you to do that, and there is a dramatic development in this section of the novel. In fact, events become odder and odder as this narrative progresses and I was left with a lot of questions by the end. Once again, life is presented as harsh and other people as fundamentally untrustworthy.
Reg
In some ways, Reg is the most interesting character of them all. This is Jason’s father, but not quite as he knows him. By closing his novel with Reg, Coupland appears to provide a sense of hope, and yet there is a startling lack of resolution.
Conclusions
I feel obliged to state that I found this novel frustrating. I like stories to be realistic and to have a sense of closure. I felt that this novel did neither. Overall, I found it quite depressing reading. However, this is of course an individual viewpoint and it’s also worth stating that I thought Coupland successfully created four distinct voices and explored important issues surrounding faith, love and the possibility of redemption. The bonus material at the end of the book contains some interesting background information.
This book is divided into four narrations. Cheryl herself, Jason her husband, Heather and lastly Reg, Jason's father. And so, the impact and far reaching effects of such events are shown.
This was a surprisingly easy read, and although the format was a little 'muddled' at times, with point of view and perspective jumping around a bit, it worked well, especially with Cheryl and Jason's stories. My attention wavered slightly toward the end but not enough by any stretch to stop reading.
Coupland has a reputation for angst and misery and in some ways this is no different. There are events within this story that at times feel unreal and too far fetched and coincidental, but also not quite far fetched enough, like you don't want to believe them but accept that they could possibly be true. The prose is clean and at times stunning, at other times slightly too much.
But I really enjoyed this, even though in the back of my mind I know perhaps I shouldn't have done. The characters are almost all selfish and self pitying, and yet this felt entirely real. I have never felt the 'cult' like adoration of Coupland that others have (I've read Girlfriend in a Coma and Generation X) but I enjoy his books and I can see how he has received that status. I guess I'm just too cynical to give it myself.
A typical Coupland looking at how devastating events change lives forever, for good or bad.
Cheryl, a teenage girl, has been cut down by a school
No, I’ve changed my mind – the best thing about this novel is the unexpectedness of each event. Hey, Nostradamus! might be written in the wake of a school shooting, but it doesn’t suggest that life – or death – stop there. Things keep happening, unexpected things, some connected to Cheryl, some entirely random. I love Coupland’s writing – he’s hardly there at all, he hands it all over to his characters – but I love, more, the way he portrays life, change, growth as unstoppable.
Also, he made my jaw drop at one point, for the most entirely unexpected murder I’ve ever read. Most authors barely manage a blink, I’m so inured to fictional death. Coupland got in under the radar and impressed the hell out of me.
But by the end of the book, I thought the story was disjointed and strange. And the
I think this has something to do with real un-conclusive ending (which isn't a bad thing), the fact that I read most of this book when I was only half-awake, and in removed bits and
I thought the characters were interesting for the most part, although I thought the third part by Heather dragged on a bit too long, and she became a tad too desperate; not that unrealistic from what I can tell, but I've had to put up with enough female empowerment speeches to realize I should be annoyed.
Over all it was a surprisingly thought provoking book, which was something I did not expect at all when I picked it up.
I was really enjoying this book; I could go so far as to say I was loving it. However, right up to about the halfway point, something so insane occurred that it took me completely out of the story and nearly ruined the entire novel for me. Coupland spends a decent amount of time building a world in which I bought in to, characters that I truly felt sorry for. He then throws this ridiculously unnecessary event that wasn’t even needed! I’ll tag a spoiler at the end so I can complain about it.
That being said, I really did like the characters in this novel. Well, aside from Reg, but you're not supposed to like him anyway. I have this thing with overly self-righteous parent figures that can drive me up the wall. I think it comes from having a few in my family, however, I'm not going to subject you to that.
In terms of writing, it had its fair share of memorable quotes and passages. I can complain all I want about that one problem, but Coupland proved he has some serious writing chops.
It has been drilled into us that to feel fear is to not fully trust God. Whoever made that one up has never been beneath a cafeteria table with a tiny thread of someone else’s blood trickling onto their leg.
Trust me, you spend a much larger part of your life being old, not young. Rules change along the way. The first things to go are those things you thought were eternal.
Those two, especially the latter, really connected with me. Hey, I'm not exactly old (27 years old, here) but I'm starting to get that outlook. I understand exactly where he's coming from.
As iffy as I felt after reading this novel, I’m really excited to try something else of Coupland's. I thoroughly enjoyed his style, I hope that he's bound to impress me. There was enough within these pages to draw me back for another round.