Douglas Coupland’s book, Hey Nostradamus is one of the best books that I have ever read. The way that Coupland presents his religious theme is commendable; he can somehow show the flaws and highlight the strengths of religion at the same time. Coupland presents characters that anyone can relate to, no matter one’s background, this being a major strength of the novel.
The way the book was written, one gets a real sense that the characters have a personal relationship with their religious beliefs. The characters, in each of their respective chapters, examine and intensely reflect upon their beliefs, allowing us to experience their personal and spiritual evolutions. Each of these chapters lets us have a glimpse inside a specific character’s head showing us their doubts, fears and affirmations. This lends a reality to the characters which helps us relate to them because everyone knows what it is like to question ourselves and our beliefs.
Douglas Coupland is using his characters to control the reader’s emotions. By making his characters tap into their doubt he gets us to question our own beliefs; he’s trying to create a resonance between the reader and the characters in the book. By having each part of the book dedicated to one character and their paradigm at a time, we get to devote quite a bit of time exploring one character’s world-view. Taking a look at the world from four different perspectives increases the probability that the reader’s paradigm will be addressed. From this we follow the characters into a re-examination of their beliefs and therefore our own.
This story has made me re-examine my own way of looking at religion and its effect in people’s lives. This is a hard thing for a novel to do illustrating the skill of Douglas Coupland.
3 comments:
Douglas is able to portray four very different characters is a real way. He is able to examine for strong personalities. He is able to instill this doubt because he talks about subject matter that is touchy to a lot of people. He really engages people in the sorrow and pain of loosing loved ones. The novel also has amazing examples of self reflection such as reg which allows us to do some personal self reflection as well. Coupland really does wonders with this book. It is by far my favourite of all the ones we read this semester.
I'm find myself, once again, agreeing with you Claudia. This is by far my favourite novel of the semester. I think he did a marvellous job of making really human characters with all the horror and beauty that goes along with them.
Another huge thing that Coupland is able to do: evoke empathy in his readers. This is the sign of a masterful novelist. Sympathy is one thing, but for me to be able to stick myself into a character's shoes and experience what they have experienced is something on an entirely different level. I have never actually experienced the death of a loved one. I can't usually imagine what it must be like for that to happen to someone, but Coupland holds nothing back at ALL, and I experienced the deaths of those in the shooting along with the characters in the novel.
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