Hey Nostradamus! (Douglas Coupland)

Genre: Fiction
Year Published: 2003

I suppose every American born before, say, 1990 remembers the Columbine massacre. It may have hit especially hard for those who were in high school at the time, as I was. But I never much immersed myself in the findings of those who investigated Columbine; I watched the regular news coverage at the time, but I never delved too much into the whole thing. I'm not sure why, but maybe when you have to file into a cafeteria every day to eat your sack lunch, you don't want to have to think about kids who died in theirs. And while awareness of the circumstances of that time and place are more or less necessary, knowledge of the details might be more distressing than educational for anyone.

So let me just say right out that if you're the kind of person who gets upset easily, who'd never want to have to think about the Columbine massacre or anything like it, Hey Nostradamus! is not for you. I understand that impulse, but the summary of the book intrigued me, plus it was recommended by the hostess over at 50 Books, so I picked it up at the ol' library.

Coupland is Canadian, so the book is instead set in Canada, but his inspiration for his school shooting, the event that kicks off the book, is the Columbine massacre. The book is told in four parts: first, by a girl who is killed that day; second, by her secret husband, 11 years later; third, by that man's girlfriend three years after that; and finally, by the husband's father a year after that.

In the hands of another writer, it may have turned into a very moving and/or mundane portrait of grief. But Coupland's gig is disaffection, the world-gone-wrong thing. The thrust of the book is, more or less, how the shootings that day ruined various people's lives, one by one, even fifteen years down the line. He doesn't waste too much time on emotions; instead, he chronicles, in first person, his characters' thoughts and actions, trusting the reader to fill in the emotional blanks. And their actions are often destructive: there is a lot of abuse of drugs and alcohol, a lot of separating themselves from other people, a lot of pain.

The other main theme -- besides violent death and its domino effect on the living -- is religion and belief in God/fate. The girl who dies belonged to a group of young fundamentalists, and while her spiritual cohort is portrayed as pretty morally bankrupt, she herself is a true believer who seems to be narrating from heaven, or something like it. Meanwhile, her now-widowed husband, who had been a believer, spirals into apathy; his girlfriend consults with a so-called psychic under desperate circumstances; and his father manages to drive away nearly all his friends and family with his obsessive adherence to religious strictures. Belief doesn't seem to quite work for anyone, not even the dead girl, who distanced her family in her acceptance of religion.

In the end, Coupland seems to be saying, all we can really believe in is the human race, and look what we humans are capable of. Children can walk into a cafeteria and kill other children. It's a tough message to swallow, but when it's encapsulated in Coupland's straightforward, often hilarious prose, you find yourself accepting it, at least until you close the book for good.

Recommended? Sure, if the above didn't scare you off.