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Hey Nostradamus! is the 2003 Douglas Coupland novel about a Vancouver-area high school cafeteria shooting and the four people whose lives are most damaged by it. The book is narrated in four sections, by four different people across multiple decades: Cheryl, a victim killed in the shooting; Jason, her secret husband who survived; Heather, the woman who falls in love with Jason years later; Reg, Jason's difficult Christian father, who has been processing his own grief about the failure of his relationship with his son.
Coupland's strength in Hey Nostradamus! is the four-voice structural commitment. Each narrator gets full interior space and Coupland honors the differences. The Vancouver geography is rendered with care. The exploration of the way fundamentalist Christianity ages across the decades after a trauma is some of the most patient writing Coupland has ever done. Fans of Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex or Donna Tartt's The Secret History will recognize the careful multi-decade literary structure.
The book is shorter than its ambition would suggest. The closing chapters land with appropriate weight.
Five stars. One of Coupland's genuine peaks. The Hey Nostradamus! Douglas Coupland novel is essential reading for anyone interested in serious contemporary North American fiction. Recommended without reservation.
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