Hey Nostradamus! is a novel by Douglas Coupland centred on a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia and its aftermath. This is Coupland's most critically acclaimed novel. It was first published by Random House of Canada in 2003. The novel comprises four first-person narratives, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love, sex, religion, prayer and grief. Plot synopsis The novel follows the stories of victims of a fictional school shooting in North Vancouver in 1988. Coupland has expressed his concern that the killers of the Columbine High School massacre received more focus than the victims; this is his story about the victims of tragedy. The novel is told in four parts, each with a different narrator and focus. 1988: Cheryl Cheryl Anway, the seventeen year old victim of a shooting massacre at her high school at Delbrook Senior Secondary recounts her life from a liminal state where she is dead but can still hear the prayers and curses of those who are alive. Cheryl was pregnant having recently consummated her relationship with her long term boyfriend after they impulsively went to Las Vegas to be married using fake I.D.s as they are still under the age of consent. Both Cheryl and her boyfriend Jason are members of Youth Alive! a group of young Christians. During the shooting, Cheryl is trapped under a table at the centre of the cafeteria. While the killers are making their way through the crowd, one of them decides that he has had enough with the killing, and wants to stop. The other killers decide that he has become weak, and kill him. They then turn their attention to Cheryl and her friends, and Cheryl becomes the final casualty. Before Cheryl is murdered she witnesses Jason killing one of the gunman with a rock, distracting the other for long enough that the other students are able to subdue and murder the final gunman. 1999: Jason Eleven years after the massacre Jason struggles to cope with life. He pens a letter to his twin nephews, born after his older brother, Kent, dies in a car accident. Jason details his current life circumstances working as a carpenter with no true friends and frequently drinking and occasionally blacking out. He reveals that he killed one of the shooters at Delbrook his