Hey Nostradamus!

Warning: Do not read this while depressed.

My primary coping mechanism whilst depressed is reading. But picking up a random work from the stack of 200 or so unread books isn't gonna do the job. The book has to be undemanding in terms effort to read and preferably plot-driven and gripping. James Blish was my go-to author in this circumstance for many years but I've read all his novels too many times in recent years. Ditto a number of other authors who I know would fit the bill. Which leads back to the unread pile and taking a bit of a risk. Hence Douglas Coupland who has only let me down once in half a dozen or so books and has always been fairly compelling. Now, across all the books I've read by Coupland, the general themes have remained show more constant; how to cope with a modern world that isolates people and offers no automatic purpose in life. The reason this hasn't become boring or tiresome is that he seems to come at the question from an at least slightly different angle each time, his answers aren't always the same (if he gives any in that particular book) and the general tone and mood varies too. So in Generation X we are offered, run away to Mexico, as a solution. In Microserfs, make virtual Lego (or is that Jpod?) or more seriously, work for yourself, not some giant inhuman corporation. In Miss Wyoming, running away doesn't work - so Generation X turns out not to have the right answer after all. And so on. Some of these are post-modern and ironic, even openly comic e.g. Generation X and Jpod. Others are more or less earnest, like Eleanor Rigby and Miss Wyoming. And here's the risk - some are really upbeat and others are not. This one also shows Coupland's great skill with first person voice character-creation.

So Hey Nostradamus! Starts with a school shooting massacre obviously intended to be reminiscent of the Columbine incident and then gallops off into a discussion of religion, redemption, despair, forgiveness and how parents can screw up their children. The plot is gripping but in retrospect completely preposterous and goes off in directions I would never have guessed. The protagonists have various fates and one is left to sift through the aftermath and try to figure out what, if anything, Coupland is saying about Christianity. It's no straightforward thumbs up or thumbs down. And the outcome for some people is optimistic, for others - well - don't read this book if you are depressed. show less

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I guess it's the safest year to read it since it was written since school is rarely in attendance, there's people at doors to monitor who's coming in due to the pandemic...so I haven't heard of any school shootings this year. Still, it's tough to read about it even in fiction. That said, the story has four narrators and I found the best one Cheryl, who was narrating after her death about events leading up to and including the shooting. After that, the book went downhill for me until a slight uptick with the final character's turn at narrating.

In Hey Nostradamus! Coupland tells the story of a Columbine like event that take places in an East Vancouver High School and the impact it had on those involved. Told from the point of view of four different characters, Cheryl who was the last of the students killed, Jason her boyfriend, Heather who met Jason over ten years later, and Jason's father Reg. Each person has their own part to tell, but the book clearly centered around Jason and his inability to really move past Cheryl and the tragic events of that day.

I picked this book up at the library on a whim while browsing the stacks. The name grabbed my attention. I am very glad I gave it a chance. The book is heartbreakingly beautiful. Very rarely will I cry while reading a book, show more but I found myself wiping away tears several times over the 244 pages. Coupland has a rare ability to tell a story that should be depressing but instead manages to make it so much more. As a matter of course I rarely reread a book, but I may make an exception in the case of Hey Nostradamus! as I think it will be one of those books where you're constantly finding something new hidden in it's pages. show less

The best thing about this novel is that it gets progressively more interesting. The themes are enriched with each change of narrator; Coupland layers faith, murder, personal insight and growth into something multifaceted and thought-provoking.

Cheryl, a teenage girl, has been cut down by a school shooting, and will never grow past the newly-ascribed role of martyr; Jason, her high-school sweetheart and husband, spends his early twenties not talking to anyone, buried in work or drinking with an assortment of friends and associates, some of whom he has only met during blackouts. We meet, also, his new girlfriend, the wonderful Heather who brings him out of his spiral, only to have her lose him. And finally, Reg; Jason’s devout and show more embittered father who has changed from the religion-defining monster that Jason knew growing up to a man capable of introspection, who refuses to accept that this change has arrived too late to benefit his son.

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. show less

This story is told from four different points of view over the course of fifteen years, but at the center of it is one person: Jason, who survived a horrific school shooting when he was seventeen. I... really do not know what to make of this book. It is obviously a sort of reaction to Columbine, and more specifically a reaction to the simplistic perception of dead Christian teens as religious martyrs; Coupland's portrayal of religion and religious communities here is complex and far from entirely positive. But beyond that, and beyond the obvious point that experiences like this can mess people up, I'm just not quite sure what Coupland's doing here. It's a weird book. Very well written, very readable, but weird. Mostly it's a quiet show more literary work about religion and dysfunctional families and emotions, except for these odd moments where it suddenly seems to have grafted in a few pages from a melodrama or a crime thriller. And big chunks of the story just seem to be... missing. Things happen. We don't know why. We don't see their beginnings or their ends. We don't know what they mean. Maybe that's the point, I don't know. It's thought-provoking, I suppose. But ultimately it's not a very satisfying read. Interesting, yes. But not satisfying. show less

So who out there hasn’t read Douglas Coupland? Until last week, I hadn’t. Hey Nostradamus! is the ninth novel by the Canadian author and visual artist, with several more released since then, but it is the first work of his that I have read.

The novel manages to explore dark themes while being a page-turner, and proved to be a wonderful introduction to his work.

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 show more 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 show less

As pointed out in William Sutcliffe’s review in The Independent, the “journal entry” format of the second and third parts occasionally strains credibility. Nevertheless, I found it to be a fitting style, and very effective in building empathy with the characters. The audiobook narration probably helped in that regard - the voice actors give a wonderfully expressive performance.

Religious fundamentalism is a primary topic here, but if the novel is read as a criticism of - or attempt at deep reflection on - such beliefs, it will leave much to be desired. The mind of a “true believer” is only explored in Reg, who is an extreme and idiosyncratic example. Still, the behaviors of Kent (in trying to remain carefully neutral when his show more brother is accused of involvement with the shooting) and Reg (in using bizarre spiritual logic to declare his son a murderer and to declare that one of his grandsons must be soulless) show how privileging belief over empathy can cause senseless divisions in a family, tragically wasting the opportunity for closeness.

I would focus not on the religious angle, but simply on the characters dealing with trauma. Despite some flaws, it’s engaging and poignant.

"What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives." show less