Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland was a leap for me. I found out about him on another book-blogger's page and decided it might be interesting to read a book where the main inciting incident is a school shooting. Overall, I would give this book a B+. Coupland tells a wonderful story, with those great little twists in plot that have you sighing and screaming at the same time. His writing is also beautiful at times, but only when the narrator is male. I had some problems with his female narrators. Both Cheryl and Heather seemed too much like the stereotypical whiny female and finishing their chapters became a chore, even though Cheryl's chapter is supposedly the most interesting since she narrates her own death in the school shooting.
I also didn't know what to make of the rampant religion, which in the beginning turned me off and made me almost not read the book. But once you get past that first chapter, Jason takes over and the story really starts to emerge in the wake of the school shootings. Coupland does a great job of taking his characters through a horrible tragedy and then shows us what the aftermath might be like. And while I thought Cheryl was supposed to be the focal point of the novel and the figure that haunts you well after the book has been read, I think I was wrong. Jason is this figure, because it is his story that lingers, his losses that you feel when the novel comes to a close.
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