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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"God doesn't issue moral credit cards",
By Elizabeth Nolan (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hey Nostradamus!: A Novel (Coupland, Douglas) (Hardcover)
Coupland's eighth novel Hey Nostradamus! opens with the Columbine-esque massacre of students in a Vancouver high school in 1988. It is an event related to us through the beautifully woven-together narrative fragments of Cheryl Anway who we soon realise is herself a victim of the tragedy. Cheryl has recently secretly married her boyfriend Jason Klaasen in Las Vegas, and that morning discovers she is pregnant with his baby. What follows are three further narratives covering the thirty years which take us from the eighties to the present day. We see Jason 12 years on, still clearly unable to come to terms with Cheryl's death and having taken on a hermit-like existence; then Heather, Jason's new girlfriend struggling to deal with his disappearance; and finally Reg, Jason's fanatically religious father whose coda brings us to the present day.Many inches have been dedicated to discussing the relevance of Columbine to this text and as a result the novel has been criticised for failing to address the psychology of the teenagers who commit the crime. But this is no exploration of Columbine and shouldn't be read as one. What interests Coupland is not so much the event of the shooting itself but rather the results which it produces. A series of seismic circles pulsating outwards until we reach the here and now. The first two words of the novel tell us what Coupland is really doing here and they are Cheryl's words `I believe'. Coupland sets the shooting in 1988 for a good reason, and that is to distance it, historicize it almost; to use it as a genesis point for his real theme, which is belief in all the multifarious incarnations in which it exists within our society. Each of the four main characters that share the narrative unevenly between them, are shown dealing with a collapse of the system of belief which has maintained them. These systems range from Reg's evangelical fanaticism, through the bitchy, disloyal Youth Alive! Christian group of which Jason and Cheryl are a part; to the more dubious emotional dependence which Heather develops for the utterances of a psychic, when Jason disappears. Just as the soothsaying's of Nostradamus have helped society to post-rationalise the terrible events which happen on our planet everyday ( most memorably of course in the prophecy of the `two twin brothers torn apart by chaos' which was beamed around the globe by email after September 11th) so too do these characters twist and manipulate religious or pagan beliefs to protect themselves. It is an hypocrisy summed up most aptly by Cheryl when she states `I did want Jason, but, as I've said, only on my own terms, which also happened to be God's terms,...I'm not sure if I used God or he used me." There are flaws in Coupland's text; the sub-plot in which Jason becomes involved is confusing and adds little to the development of the story, and certainly confuses the ending in a way that is less enigmatic, more frustrating. However, if you can get beyond reading this as a meditation upon Columbine, you will find a great deal of interest and reward in this text, and a realisation that the issues it is addressing are far more pertinant and universal than it could be given credit for.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A strong story, in Coupland's inimitable style,
By
This review is from: Hey Nostradamus!: A Novel (Coupland, Douglas) (Hardcover)
Coupland has once again produced a strong story, with an element of the surreal creeping in. Whereas "All Families are Psychotic" had a number of surreal strands that rendered the required the reader to suspend their normal perspective, the worrying aspect of "Hey Nostradamus!" is that the principle surreal element is a school shooting that is, in fact, all too plausible. One aspect of the shooting is recounted from a victim's perspective (and from the perspective of immediately after the event), whereas the other story strands are taken from the vantage of several years after the event. The chain reactions from this are elegantly woven together - the husband of the victim who can not come to terms with the event, his relationship to his father and how that develops as a consequence of the tragedy, how his family interacts with his father. As with most of Coupland's later works, this story evolves through the different perspectives, rather than follows a rigid plot and time line. As either an introduction to those who have not read Coupland before, of for established fans, this is a volume that is well worth reading.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Out of the Coma, Into the Night,
By
This review is from: Hey Nostradamus!: A Novel (Coupland, Douglas) (Hardcover)
Coupland's latest novel is by far the best of his later books. I have been a devout reader of Douglas Coupland's work and have been disappointed with basically everything since Microserfs. Hey Nostradamus! has changed all of that. Hey! is a critical look into modern fanatacism and the consequences of being a teenager in a world filled with guns, God, and video games.The novel is divided into four parts each narrated by a different character. The connections between the characters are at first, not obvious. Coupland threads these misfits into a disjointed narrative that works. The first part is narrated by Cheryl, who has been killed in a Columbine-style massacre in a Vancouver high school in 1988. Cheryl's account reminds me of Susie Salmon's in The Lovely Bones--She is telling the story from a "space" not heaven, not hell, not earth. As macabre as the plot is, the style works. Her husband's (Jason's) account is not as seamless, but his disillusionment shows well through the narrative. I would have liked to have read more about Reg, Jason's religious fanatic father, but his portion of the book was cut short, I felt. There is no obvious resolution here, but in today's world, there seldom is. This, I believe, is Coupland's intent, or part of it, anyway. For those looking for critical insight into post-Columbine, post-9/11 North America, Douglas Coupland's latest novel does not disappoint.
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