Kate Zambreno

High school disaffects storm into their cafeteria and selectively shoot down the elite, one by one, from the jocks to the goodie-two-shoes, turning the victims into heroes and the suburban community on its head. Sounds like the Trenchcoat Mafia, but this isn't Colorado, it's Canada, and the year is 1988. In "Hey Nostradamus!" the author who's become the mouthpiece for disaffected youth from that period ("Generation X," "All Families Are Psychotic") twists a Columbine-like media event into a meditation on the limitations and benefits of religion, told from four different perspectives forever changed from that fatal day. Cheryl, the blonde born-again Christian and unintentional patron saint of the massacre, looks back on her short life while waiting to go to heaven; her sweetheart she secretly wed, Jason, now a carpenter involved in bizarre drug schemes, lives a wrecked life more than a decade later; his patient girlfriend, Heather, waits for Jason to return after a mysterious disappearance; and finally, Reg, Jason's cruelly fundamentalist father, realizes that his mission in life has backfired in 2003. It's difficult to differentiate between the four points of view because of Coupland's glib voice echoing throughout, but, regardless, "Hey Nostradamus!" is still filled with his sometimes humorous, lucid insights into the secret tickings of the self.

Douglas Coupland reads from "Hey Nostradamus!" on July 16 at 7pm at Borders, 830 North Michigan, (312)573-0564.

(2003-07-09)

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