I wish I could give this book 0 stars, that's how much I hate it. I bought it for $3.00 from a Barnes & Noble, and thought I'd amuse myself with it on a plane-ride home. Not only did I want to grind my eyes out forever, I wanted to make it impossible to remember by causing permanent brain injury to myself.

Someone told me, just the other day, when I was snarking on this novel that the authors of dime-store romance novels have more artistic and creative prose than Coupland. It is my profound hope that the man stops writing. And soon.

Douglas Coupland always runs hot or cold for me. As a child of the 90s his novels were a huge influence on me -- Microserfs being one of the few books I can honestly call life-changing -- but more often than not my now-jaded near-thirtysomething self finds the reflexive irony and shameless zeitgeistiness of his books too cutsy for their own good. After jPod I was about ready to write Coupland off altogether, but on a whim I picked up Hey Nostradamus! at a used book shop over Christmas vacation. I'm profoundly glad that I did.

Perhaps owing to the darker-than-usual material of four individuals orbiting the aftermath of a school shooting in North Van, Coupland had to tone down his trademark-kookiness in every aspect of this novel. What remains so astonishing for me is just how much better said kookiness works in small doses; when pop culture is used as flavour rather than the primary ingredient, the material leaps off the page, and his almost-Lynchian off-kilterness ends up feeling natural rather than shoehorned in.

Coupland's tackled meditations on life after death, both with respect to the deceased and those the deceased's left behind, in many of his previous novels, but it's never worked particularly well for me (consider the abrupt and quizzical end of Microserfs, for instance). Here, though, I think he found the right balance of sorrow and joy, of family love and lunacy, and shades of the supernatural, both real and imagined, to really guide us through the experience of loss, in all its aspects. Hey Nostradamus! is one of Coupland's best.

Not long after I began reading this book I found myself wondering ‘Is this young adult fiction?’ it certainly reads like it. Written in a straightforward, no frills style which, no doubt, was shrewdly designed to appeal to the angst ridden teenager it is a trashy ode to ‘my parents suck’ which I could not bring myself to finish.

The book is divided into four different sections each written from the point of view of four of the main characters as they struggle to hold together their lives after a high school shooting. On paper most of the characters are very different however due to lack of skill or effort on the part of Coupland all of the characters seem to have a very similar outlook on life: Everything sucks and none of it is their fault. Somebody else is always to blame.

The characters are very stereotypical and utterly predictable in their outlook and behaviour. The story itself is not interesting or original in any way. In fact sometimes it borders on the absolutely absurd. On more than one occasion I found myself laughing at loud at the ridiculous plot.
By way of example; One of the characters discovers that her husband has been killed in a car accident. She phones her brother-in-law, gives him the news and invites him over for a shoulder to cry on. As soon as he arrives she asks him outright to sleep with her so she can get pregnant because his brother fired blanks! Of course the brother agrees to this but only on condition that they get married before he does it. They fly to Las Vegas immediately and get married in a quickie ceremony. At this point they get spotted in Vegas by a mutual friend who the female then murders so he can’t tell anyone he’s seen them! Of course she gets away with the murder and gets pregnant with twins after having sex just once in a seedy Vegas hotel...Do you see what I mean about absolutely absurd?!

I put the book down shortly after, it is badly written overrated rubbish which should be avoided at all costs.

I didn’t get this book. It was full of big thoughts by a presumably big thinker. I found it too meditative and lost the point of it; a book that is perhaps too self-important for a reader like me.

Note: this is a novel study option for high school students but, as much as I didn’t like it as an adult, I would have REALLY struggled with it as a teenager

My major complaint is the fact that to read this you have to suspend your disbelieve that four very different, interrelated, characters could write so articulately in the first person – not to mention they all write in a similar manner. This book is not believable on any level – the writing, perspectives, or plot. Highly disappointing.

This novel is certainly difficult to read, due to the nature of story. Of course, there is no "easy" way to tell a story about a school shooting. However, my lower rating comes from my disappointment of the characters, who all seemed underdeveloped. I realize that grief and despair can lead people to do strange things, but I could not comprehend some of the characters' actions, particularly the events described towards the end of the story. I'm not certain what Coupland was attempting to accomplish in this novel, but the story fell very short for me.

yep. a waste of time and trees.

Huh???
Bad sign when the book's antecedent action is so much more appealing than the actual plot, and when you find yourself thinking this is too dark to be funny, too quirky to be taken seriously, and too odd to be enjoyed.

This was a very interesting book that made me think deeply about violence and the changes it can have on people's lives.
It seems to be a simple story but there were many points where I set the book down and thought about violence. It also made think about how many of my actions can have big consequences that change people for the rest of their lives.
This book really made me interested during Cheryl's perspective but my attention began to dwindle in the section on Heather.
For a book that really makes you think about violence and its lasting consequences, read Hey Nostradomus.

This novel was not very good. The characters weren’t entirely believable, the development of the story was shallow, and it’s really only the ending of the story from Reg’s point of view that made it worthwhile to read. This coming from the same author who wrote All Families are Psychotic is unbelievable.

Coupland 1) never convinces me that Reg's unrelenting, myopic, savage pieties could (let alone would) spring from a Mennonite upbringing and worldview (indeed, Coupland exhibits so little understanding of the Mennonite perspective as to leave one wondering why Reg is written as having come from a Mennonite home in the first place), and 2) remains wearily incapable of giving his characters voices and ways of seeing the world distinct either from one another or from himself, and 3) commits the cardinal sin of adding an "-s" to Revelation (a telling, and lamentable, oversight in any book passing even the most conditional -- as this one's is -- critique on the Christian religion)...

But despite all of this, Hey Nostradamus! was enormously moving in the way of Generation X and Microserfs, bracingly perceptive about how two people who love one another communicate and fail to communicate, and adept at subverting (this reader's) expectations without leaving one feeling as though Coupland has cheated his narrative's integrities in doing so.

Light years better than either Girlfriend in a Coma or Shampoo Planet.

"The heart of a man is like deep water."

Oh wow, what a novel! It's really no accident when novels become international bestsellers.

I'm at risk of sounding like a clichéd critic, but screw it:

Hey Nostradamus! is at times wickedly hilarious, stunningly poignant, and utterly tragic. And I don't use those words lightly. I don't say something is hilarious unless I've laughed, and I often laughed aloud while reading this. If you enjoy a witty and sarcastic (sometimes dark) humour, then you'd enjoy this book. On being poignant and tragic, I shed a few tears, especially at the end. Books rarely draw tears out of me.

Coupland was inspired to write this in part due to the tragedy that was Columbine. I think he wrote this brilliantly and in no way compromised the memory of the real massacre that happened in that school. And today, as regular mass shootings happen, this book is as relevant as ever.

This book is fantastic literature. But for anyone who is intimidated by literature, this book should be a must read. Coupland is a great writer and his style is smooth. This novel reads like a thriller at times; there are twists (and one big surprise in there...) that kept the pages turning.

I think Coupland also really tapped into a nerve here. He really understands the human condition. In all of these characters he shows that every person has varying degrees of cynicism. I enjoyed the honesty. I enjoyed that Coupland showed humans don't always have that happy redeeming quality we like to think exists, but that sometimes there are plights that are unbearable, and which we never truly overcome. The mind is fragile, and sometimes when it breaks into a million pieces, it's impossible to put back together wholly.

He explores the role of religion in our lives, especially in the aftermath of tragedy. I'm personally not religious, but I can well understand how it might be comforting to turn to outside comfort during unbearable situations, or even in everyday life. I can also understand turning against religion when it seems not to provide the right answers. Coupland shows both angles here. I liked this because you never get the impression that the author has a particular agenda.

I've got only one criticism. This book was written in first person, which is fine (Coupland does this brilliantly, which few can do, I feel). What I think Coupland might have benefited from would have been changing the tone and vocabulary of the individual characters. The book is split into the narratives of four different people, yet they all sounded the same. In particular, Reg's voice could have been altered a bit. Reg himself admits that he doesn't have a large vocab, but he sounds as intelligent and verbose as the others. Oh well, this is really a minor thing. It's easy enough to overlook if you are reading without the intention of reviewing afterwards.

5 stars. Great literature, thrilling read. As good a fictional account of the human condition as you'll ever read. I'd recommend this to you. I'm also looking forward to reading another Coupland novel.