Hey Nostradamus!: A Novel [Paperback]

Douglas Coupland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2004

Pregnant and secretly married, Cheryl Anway scribbles what becomes her last will and testament on a school binder shortly before a rampaging trio of misfit classmates gun her down in a high school cafeteria. Overrun with paranoia, teenage angst, and religious zeal in the massacre's wake, this sleepy suburban neighborhood declares its saints, brands its demons, and moves on. But for a handful of people still reeling from that horrific day, life remains permanently derailed. Four dramatically different characters tell their stories: Cheryl, who calmly narrates her own death; Jason, the boy no one knew was her husband, still marooned ten years later by his loss; Heather, the woman trying to love the shattered Jason; and Jason's father, Reg, whose rigid religiosity has separated him from nearly everyone he loves. Hey Nostradamus! is an unforgettable portrait of people wrestling with spirituality and with sorrow and its acceptance.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Considering some of his past subjects--slackers, dot-commers, Hollywood producers--a Columbine-like high school massacre seems like unusual territory for the usually glib Douglas Coupland. Anyone who has read Generation X or Miss Wyoming knows that dryly hip humor, not tragedy, is the Vancouver author's strong suit. But give Coupland credit for twisting his material in strange, unexpected shapes. Coupland begins his seventh novel by transposing the Columbine incident to North Vancouver circa 1988. Narrated by one of the murdered victims, the first part of Hey Nostradamus! is affecting and emotional enough to almost make you forget you're reading a book by the same writer who so accurately characterized a generation in his first book, yet was unable to delineate a convincing character. As Cheryl Anway tells her story, the facts of the Delbrook Senior Secondary student's life--particularly her secret marriage to classmate Jason--provide a very human dimension to the bloody denouement that will change hundreds of lives forever. Rather than moving on to explore the conditions that led to the killings, though, Coupland shifts focus to nearly a dozen years after the event: first to Jason, still shattered by the death of his teenage bride, then to Jason's new girlfriend Heather, and finally to Reg, Jason's narrow-minded, religious father.

Hey Nostradamus! is a very odd book. It's among Coupland's most serious efforts, yet his intent is not entirely clear. Certainly there is no attempt at psychological insight into the killers' motives, and the most developed relationships--those between Jason and Cheryl, and Jason and Reg--seem to have little to do with each other. Nevertheless, it is a Douglas Coupland book, which means imaginatively strange plot developments--as when a psychic, claiming messages from the beyond, tries to extort money from Heather--that compel the reader to see the story to its end. And clever turns of phrase, as usual, are never in short supply, but in Cheryl's section the fate we (and she) know awaits her gives them an added weight: "Math class was x's and y's and I felt trapped inside a repeating dream, staring at these two evil little letters who tormented me with their constant need to balance and be equal with each other," says the deceased narrator. "They should just get married and form a new letter together and put an end to all the nonsense. And then they should have kids." --Shawn Conner, Amazon.ca --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Coupland has long been a genre unto himself, and his latest novel fits the familiar template: earnest sentiment tempered by sardonic humor and sharp cultural observation. The book begins with a Columbine-like shooting at a Vancouver high school, viewed from the dual perspectives of seniors Jason Klaasen and Cheryl Anway. Jason and Cheryl have been secretly married for six weeks, and on the morning of the shooting, Cheryl tells Jason she is pregnant. Their situation is complicated by their startlingly deep religious faith (as Cheryl puts it, "I can't help but wonder if the other girls thought I used God as an excuse to hook up with Jason"), and their increasingly acrimonious relationship with a hard-core Christian group called Youth Alive! After Cheryl is gunned down, Jason manages to stop the shooters, killing one of them. He is first hailed as a hero, but media spin soon casts him in a different light. This is a promising beginning, but the novel unravels when Jason reappears as an adult and begins an odd, stilted relationship with Heather, a quirky court reporter. Jason disappears shortly after their relationship begins, and Heather turns to a psychic named Allison to track him down in a subplot that meanders and flags. Coupland's insight into the claustrophobic world of devout faith is impressive-one of his more unexpected characters is Jason's father, a pious, crusty villain who gradually morphs into a sympathetic figure-but when he extends his spiritual explorations to encompass psychic swindles, the novel loses its focus. Coupland has always been better at comic set pieces than consistent storytelling, and his lack of narrative control is particularly evident here. Noninitiates are unlikely to be seduced, but true believers will relish another plunge into Coupland-world.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; Fifth or Later Edition edition (July 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582344159
• ISBN-13: 978-1582344157
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #826,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "God doesn't issue moral credit cards" August 1, 2003

By Elizabeth Nolan

Format: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 December 22, 2003

By Paul Donovan

Format: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 October 15, 2003

By Kristen VINE™ VOICE

Format: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.