Cheryl Anway herself admits there is nothing different about her, she's just a normal high school girl. Except that she's secretly married and has just found out that she is pregnant. She writes some scribbles on a school binder, and these scribbles turn her into a martyr. What she writes is "God is nowhere God is now here God is nowhere God is now here". Shortly afterwards, she is killed when three classmates enter the school and start shooting the students.

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. ( )

This was the first (and only to date) Coupland novel I have read and when I first began reading it, my brow was furrowed. The first character's narrative was trite and I found myself completely disinterested in her story. After perservering through the first part, I finally realized that they way Coupland wrote was intentional. The characters were well developed and believable. In the end I loved this book. ( )

http://pixxiefishbooks.blogspot.com/2...

Possibly the most puzzling Douglas Coupland I have ever read. For a book I'm not even sure I liked, it really grabbed me - I couldn't put it down, and I couldn't stop thinking about it whenever I wasn't reading it, and even now that I'm done.

As a general rule, I like Coupland. He is, mostly, brilliant: witness Jpod, Microserfs, Generation X, and Life After God, to name a few. But then he'll fall into a dismal hole of ... well, I don't even know how to describe it. Girlfriend in a Coma, which I read years and years ago, was one of those abysmal moments. In fact, it turned me off Coupland altogether for about 3 years. From what I actually managed to read of it, Polaroids from the Dead was another. It's as if, every now and then, Coupland just becomes too self-aware of his brilliance, and he just inputs too many of his conventions and his what-it-is-that-makes-him-brilliance (his je ne sais quoi, as it were), and the result is overloaded and heavy.

But Hey Nostradamus! doesn't quite do that. It tries to - it tries very hard to be too self-aware and too Couplandesque - but it never quite manages it. And so you end up with this: a book that ought to be terrible, but isn't. Damn you, Coupland, for writing a book I want to dislike but can't! ( )

One of my top 10 favourite books. ( )

Dealing with the aftermath of a mass shooting ( )