Douglas Coupland follows four characters who were directly related in one way or the other to a tragic event in the past.

Cheryll: the pregnant 17 year old who wrote in her journal what would be her last entry, and her thoughts from the afterlife as well,her own sentiments about the aftermath of the tragedy at the school cafeteria that took her own life, addressing directly all to God.

 

Jason: The secret husband of Cheryl, narrates his own experience from becoming a hero-suspect-and back to a victim of the same tragic event, writing his own memoirs from a van facing the ocean, more than 10 years after Cheryl died, his inability to cope with the sad event, his alienation with his father whom he casually refer to as Reg.

Heather: The woman who love Jason, still feeling trapped from the effect of Jason's tragic past,caught between Jason's inability to move on, Heather told her story in a much different narrative as an outsider from that terrible tragedy, about her chance meeting with Jason, falling in love with him and her desperate attempt to locate Jason when he goes missing.

Reg: Jason's strictly religious father, narrates a short glimpse of his character and offers a rare look at the seemingly distant and hard rock figure, the object of Jason's contempt, partly due to his hypocrite views about religion and those he seems as not worthy of paradise.

'Hey Nostradamus!' is a powerful and funny novel about consequences, after-effects and the human response to tragedy. The book doesn't focus on the killers. their motives nor the cops investigation, as if it only served as a backdrop to the story or theme of the novel which is coping with the aftermath of the tragedy, as told in first hand narrative of the four characters and those around them.

Reading the book is like riding a roller coaster in terms of emotion, from the onset of Cheryl's narrative about her death, life ( which she described as more boring, getting married in Las Vegas, being the subject of gossip among her fellow schoolmates and so on) Up to her own brewing questions about the purpose or reasons of what happened to her that morning in the school cafeteria.

Then to Jason, with a complete revamp settings, 11 years down the line, still coping with Cheryl's death and the eventual separation of his own family, reliving the death of his brother, writing in a profound manner addressed to his Brother's twins?, His own struggles of not really getting a life after that sad event, like a living dead, until the day he disappeared for no apparent reason at all.Jason's story is the most compelling, the longest and often the funniest.

Enter Heather, the only person not directly connected to the shooting tragedy, she tries hard to connect with Reg while at the same time making an effort to locate Jason ( enter psychics or should i say fake psychics who brings messages from make believe characters ).

And Reg the estranged father caught up with his own religious dogmas, strict and questionable moral code, that eventually distant him further from his own family. All said and done, although i was left hanging a bit about the conclusion, there are still a lot to treasure about, a lot of questions abound especially the motives behind the killing, but that will make up an entirely different novel.

Because what Coupland brought here is a story of people, on how they lived, try to cope up, with the usual strands of indifference,grief,loneliness and even guilt.

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It's 2004 and Liz Dunn, in her own words "overweight and lonely woman in her 40's" is writing a journal, in here she relates her childhood years, from finding a severed body of a transvestite in a railway track to sneaking on other people's home, not to steal but just "to sit and stare at the family pics" and a high school trip to Rome.

To the era of the last Haley's Bop comet in 1997, when Liz, lonely yet quite okay with the setup of living by herself, showing for work, renting videos and her condo living receives an emergency call from the hospital about a patient named Jeremy.

All of a sudden Liz's world is catapulted to a never ending examining of what ifs and a race against time to make up for a regrettable decision she made years back. A catapult that will take her into a trip across the world to find the answer to the question that has puzzled her since that school trip to Rome.

All told with a heartfelt honesty that serves as a prelude to a wonderful journey that will climax with Liz while hunched in an airplane seat just above Reykjavik, Iceland in 2004, finally getting that new perspective in life .

****
It's Douglas Coupeland, master of the profound, venturing into a soul of a character not likely of other novels, but very much about the average human being, it can be any of us, the feelings of loneliness, being invisible, unwanted, regrets, Liz Dunn takes us there, to have us realize every words as true, thinking "yeah i've felt that before".

In "Hey Nostradamus" Coupeland takes us how to deal with a tragedy and lost love, in "All Families Are Psychotic" he shows us the craziness of a family all sewn up by one major thread, which is love for one another.

In "Eleanor Rigby", there are patterns of close family ties, while at the same time showing us the brewing distance that a once close knit family encounters when everybody starts growing old, having a family of their own. In here Liz Dunn a self confessed loner is besieged with a caring brother and sister a worried Mother who still lectures her at the same time Liz wonders if she ever makes her proud.

"Eleanor Rigby" while named after the Beatles song about a lonely woman who waits for love by her window, the similarities ends there, aside from being Liz's email (eleanorrigby@arctic.ca) Liz wasn't looking for anything, life as a loner is a gift yet at the same time a curse, it just so happens that when Jeremy arrives in her life, she was left without a choice but to steer different from the path that she expects to thread for the rest of her life.

How one event brought on from an encounter buried in the past can shake things up and provides someone like Liz a real shot at happiness, is both endearing and riveting.

If there's a writer that writes for the underdog it's Douglas Coupland, if there's anyone who could make me read a novel that is narrated by a 44 year old woman, chubby, un-attractive, self confessed loner with "chick lit" written all over, i guess it's Douglas Coupland, not exactly my kind of book genre. But i like it nonetheless, good enough to stay in my shelf for a long time.
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