Hey Nostradamus!

by Douglas Coupland (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.25

  GOD IS NOWHERE GOD IS NOW HERE GOD IS NOWHERE GOD IS NOW HERE Cheryl Anway is 'no longer a part of the world and still not yet a part of what follows'. She was pregnant, but she isn't any longer. The morning she went into school to tell her boyfriend -- well, secret husband, in fact -- Jason that they were going to have a baby was the last morning she spent alive. It was a beautiful day in Vancouver, and the world had seemed 'unbearably pretty' to Cheryl. She was sitting with her girlfriends in the school cafeteria as the gunfire started, and watched the three malcontents, students who had dressed up like duck-hunters, give death to their schoolmates one lunch-hour. Ten years on, Jason is the kind of guy you sometimes see, sitting in his car, staring out in silence at nothing in particular -- with, sometimes, a dog at hand to indicate his ability to sustain a relationship. Meanwhile Jason's father loves what God loves, hates what God hates; while his mother is lost to drink. And Jason moves between black-outs and all-too-clear memories of the school shootings and their aftermath. As Jason moves in and out of his own life, between body and soul, he allows the inimitable Douglas Coupland to give us in Hey Nostradamus! perhaps his most soulful and searching story yet.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.25

  The story of one family piecing itself back together after a tragic highschool shooting, Hey Nostradamus! is Douglas Coupland's most soulful, piercing and searching novel yet. Pregnant and secretly married, Cheryl Anway scribbles her last will and testament - and erie premonition - 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 ensuing massacre's wake, this sleepy Vancouver neighbourhood declares its saints, brands its demons and finally moves on. But for a handful of people still reeling from that horrific day, life remains perpetually derailed. Four dramatically different characters tell their stories in their own words: 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, a cruelly religious man no one suspects is still worth loving. Each wrestles with God, self-defeat and a crippling inability to hold on to those they love. Coupland's most surprising and soulful novel yet, rich with his trademark cultural acuity and dark humour, Hey Nostradamus! ties themes of alienation, violence and misguided faith into a fateful and unforgettable knot from which four people must untangle their lives.