false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1163449482m/3381.jpg 3381 16 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 <I>Generation X</I> or <I>Miss Wyoming</I> 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 <I>Hey Nostradamus!</I> 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. <p> <I>Hey Nostradamus!</I> 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." <I>--Shawn Conner, Amazon.ca</I> 919466 2003 Hey Nostradamus! total:2382|5:482|4:897|3:758|2:199|1:46| 2382 8716 3050 189 5 5 false false Wed Oct 31 09:24:18 -0700 2007 Fri Nov 23 22:48:15 -0800 2007
I am reading it again,...more...]]> 2 3 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Apr 18 12:38:09 -0700 2007 Mon Dec 31 11:23:35 -0800 2007
“As far as I could tell, Jason and I were the only married students to have attended Delbrook. It wasn’t a neighborhood that married young. It was neither religious nor irreligious, although back in ...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Jul 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 13 10:59:51 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 16 10:52:22 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 2 false false Thu Dec 06 13:06:09 -0800 2007 Thu Dec 06 13:09:17 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 31 12:42:39 -0800 2008 Fri May 23 12:17:12 -0700 2008
I love Douglas Coupland. He just has this way of seeing through the superficialness of our culture and pulling so much depth and meaning out of it. His characters experience such tremendous growth. And he is so funny. I am always alternating between being on the ...more...]]> 5 1 true false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 09 06:25:09 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 15 09:51:42 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 1 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 16 09:58:36 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 16 10:00:01 -0700 2008 JPod, I swore to myself I would still read this book in spite of how unbelievably horrible JPod was. Hey Nostradamus! was pretty good, even if DC relies on so many of the same conventions throughout his books -- hired foreign goons, lengthy descriptions of Vancouver, listing things tha...more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Fri Feb 16 11:07:10 -0800 2007 Fri Feb 16 11:48:59 -0800 2007
the good parts are so unerringly perfect and divine. the idea makes me giddy with excitement (the first quarter is narrated by a 1...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Jan 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 19 01:23:57 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 19 01:32:55 -0800 2009
Coupland is an amazing author. He is capable of putting himself in the shoes of a t...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Feb 09 06:45:43 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 09 06:45:50 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Oct 02 10:10:57 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 02 10:11:01 -0700 2009
In the first part, Cheryl describes the Columbine-like shooting in her school during her senior year in 1988. Her and her boyfriend Jason had ju...more...]]> 4 0 false true Fri Jul 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 16:05:49 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 16:10:07 -0700 2009
The first part, Cheryl, is a...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Sep 20 08:28:21 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 20 09:46:31 -0700 2007 Considering our country's recent history wih school shootings, I think Hey Nostradamus! should be required reading for everyone who can read. This is an intense novel about four people whose lives are inexricably and forever tied to one event that occured in 1988. It's an explorati...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri May 29 17:42:52 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 02 07:26:25 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue May 29 06:59:41 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 08:14:30 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Feb 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 28 06:40:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 17:53:44 -0800 2009
There are a lot of grotesque shows of religious piety in this book, and Coupland often touches on the theme that people generally get spirituality totally wrong. ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Feb 28 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 27 08:40:10 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 09 08:49:00 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 1 false false Sun Jul 29 22:28:20 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 30 12:14:25 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 1 false false Thu May 08 05:22:25 -0700 2008 Thu May 08 05:29:42 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 29 06:10:01 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 06:11:12 -0800 2009
I thought that the telling of the story from four different perspectives at four different times was a well-used technique, as it helped to capture not only the even...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3381