Hey, Nostradamus

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

Cheryl is the epitome of teenage piety, her purity running deep and steadfast with a stubbornness indicative of any 17 year old. Jason is everything his father isn't. Impulsive, worldly and antisocial he forges his own way blindly and wholeheartedly, trusting in the love and bond he shares with his girlfriend Cheryl.

This story is about them, and wholly not about them. It is at once a coming of age tale and a commentary on society at large. Focusing on relationships - and especially the familial kind - Hey, Nostradamus explores the complexities of the connections forged through necessity and life experiences. The difference between families we are born into and cannot fully escape, and those we seek out to spend our lives with. It is about innocence, and guilt. Avoidance and acceptance, and above all the overriding presence of Something Else. Of God, of spirituality, or simply of the contemplation of such ideas.

Coupland, as always, has an art for weaving religious or spiritual tones throughout his work in an accessible and unchallenging way. He manages to make the reader question thoughts of morality, sin, innocence and human behaviour without bogging down the narrative. Despite heavy subject matter, -destruction, catastrophe and violence are, as is common for Coupland - evident early on in the novel, the text remains a quick and easy read as it deals with dark subject matter in a frank and instinctively human way. This honesty allows the reader to be honest about their own emotions and beliefs, forming a bond between text and reader without enforcing ideologies onto him or her. It is the honesty and the boldness, never sugar coating events or feelings, that makes Coupland such a wonderful author to read. His tales however outside your realm of circumstance become feasible or relatable in the very reactions characters have to them: ones that by little stretch of the imagination could have been yours.

Furthermore the style of the novel is such that we are part of each narrators mind - starting with Cheryl who speaks so calmly and retrospectively - who draws the reader in with compassion and intrigue alike.

A wonderful balance between family relations, the darkness of a world under siege and the guilts of growing up and accepting or rejecting your parents teaching, "Hey, Nostradamus" is a truly excellent read and a great marker of famous Coupland style.

Everything Remains Dark

Browse Tumblr for more than 30 seconds, and I'll beat you'll come across some reference to Jonathan Safran Foer - most likely, a non-creative posting of cover photos of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close scrawled in bright vibrant letters. See cover here And, I must admit, the poppy type-art simplicity, was a good seller for me. While both novels continue to circle the Literary cult cultures with quotes and trendy 'likes' I'd be lying if I said I actually knew much of anything about this novel aside from the time I was ready to watch anything Elijah Wood was in and came across his smiling sunflower-glassed visage at Blockbuster. I never did watch the movie though, so it was blindly that I dove into the pages of Everything Is Illuminated this September with no frame of reference for plot, style or literary context.
Long story short - I had no idea what the book was really about, except that Lit-hips loved it.

Taking place in the Ukraine - which might explain the bright blue and yellow, at any rate, the novel follows two or three timelines that weave their way (occasionally connecting) through the rural Ukrainian villages. The first, most 'present-day' story is that of Sasha, a small town Ukrainian young man longing for America, and a life bigger than that which he leads. Manufacturing tales and encounters that boost his image, he rattles off depictions of his daily grand life with poignant humour and charmingly broken english. Capturing that fluent but not North American style of speaking and writing, Safran immediately gains the readers trust through the voice of Sasha, and establishes a relationship where the reader is firmly on his side, and rooting for his success and happiness.

Shortly into this we meet Jonathan Safran Foer the character - an American travelling through the Ukraine in search of one woman from an old photograph, and a connection to his past: the one who saved his father's life during the second world war.

And that's about where my comprehensive overview ends.

Weaving in and out of this present day story - which itself is told partly in the moment, and in part through recounting letters from Sasha to Jonathan after the fact - are tales of the past. The relatives Jonathan is seeking to gain knowledge of have their own chance to tell a story - a stumbling and halting history of their village, and the individuals and encounters which occurred there.

Though in theory the reader is able to keep histories separate, the manner in which each is introduced and revealed leaves much to the imagination, and tends toward simple confusion. I often found myself trying to decipher who was who and related in what way, what time period/frame of the novel I was in, and just what the heck was actually going on.

Because of this, the novel quickly became muddled, confusing, and frustrating. Though there were certainly moments where the reader could sympathize with the characters of the novel, the disconnect of the stories and the narrative style prevented continuity or emotional attachment at the level which the story needed. Without it, the weight of character's emotional baggage, war trauma, and inner turmoils fall flat, missing the reader all together on their downward spiral into muddled reality and confused plot lines.

Rather as though bits an pieces of the novel were left out, revelations and conversations would occur in the novel without explanation or backstory to provide either context or relevancy. As such, I often found myself frustrated with entire sections of the novel, unable to connect to one character or another, or piece together the significance of one story in relation to another.

While I could grasp at the thought that the miss-mash of stories is a commentary or depiction of the way in which history circles, or memories blur in the minds of both individuals and nations - pulling this all together in the collective frame of reference of Jewish life in the Second World War - I'd have to say that's the type of stretch more commonly found in the pages of a second year English Major's dashed together analytic essay. It's time to face the music. Parts of the novel held merit, but as a collective book, it fell short.

I'm not saying each and every aspect needs to be explained in full detail, or that backstories need be outlined for every anecdote, but when the reader is left with an overwhelming feeling of 'so what' or, 'how does this relate to anything again?' you know that something's missing. Finishing the novel with an overwhelming sense of frustration, I have to admit I was disappointed. Sure, Safran illuminates some honest, blunt truths here and there, but generally speaking, I found the very title of the novel a wild irony (the one thing I can say just may have been deliberate) and the resounding conclusion lingering darkness.
And I'm not really sure what to do in the dark.

Biblical Fiction

I wasn't really sure what to think of Deepak Chopra's novel Jesus when given it for a birthday present by my (non religious) mother one birthday. It sat on my shelf for nearly a year, and finally this December I picked it up to have a good look. I'd no idea what it would really be about. Was it a fictional story? Historical account? Bible companion/gospel?

Jesus is, indeed, a completely fictional novel. It's not a bible story, a companion reader or anything else. So then... the next set of questions, some of which raised by friends who saw me reading it. As a Christian was it 'okay' to read it? Where was Chopra writing from? Was he a believer? was he trying to disprove Jesus in some way? What, in all essence, was this book I was holding?

Well, I'm not completely sure I can answer all those questions, and in the end, I decided i didn't need to know everything in order to read it. It wasn't, as far as i could tell, an attack on christianity, and really as long as i went into it knowing where I stood, what harm could come of it?

After reading the Forward I discorved that the book is aiming to look at the life of Jesus that is NOT included in the Bible - that is to say, the middle years between childhood (we know little about him after his miraculous birth aside from when he speaks to the crowd at age 12ish) and his 30's when he comes back on the scene as the 'grown up' Jesus. I still wasn't positive on chopra's slant, but it didn't seem negative.

The character of Jesus is an extremely human one, in Chopra's depiction. though I have come to loosely deem the novel 'biblical fiction', his work drawing from characters and scenarios we find in the bible, actions and experiences and even the way Jesus is portrayed within the novel is extremely fictionalized.
They story focuses less on Jesus's Godliness, and more on his human side, creating a relatability which, with caution, allowed me to feel a great connection with the story and, given my beliefs, with the actual Jesus. While of course Jesus did not actually behave as the character does in the novel, the experiences he goes through in his journey to realize his own power, destiny, holiness -however you want to word it - provided a great example for any Christian believer.

It is dangerous to remove the aspects of Jesus that make him truly God, as is essentially done within the novel (though he eventually takes ownership of being God's son) and yet as we read, the Jesus in the novel struggles between his own desires, and those of God, the path of resistance and acceptance, fighting and succumbing. The matters of will and faith were such that despite the details not align with the Bible, the messages of Faith, following, and trust in God were strong and moving, and extremely benifical to me as a Christian.

Perhaps a rather controversial novel, and yet I found it only strengthened my Faith and my understanding of God, even as it highlighted how Jesus wasn't. The contrast between saviour and a humanized character emphasied both Godly nature and human nature in a way that further connected me to the former, and widened my view of my own faith journey.

Whether you're a Christian or not, this novel may not be for you, but I for one, found it both extremely enjoyable, and also beneficial in strengthing my views, faith and perspectives while allowing for a wider angle view of both my religion, the art of fiction, and Jesus himself.