Hey Nostradamus!

May 5, 2003
Coupland has long been a genre unto himself, and his latest novel fits the familiar template: earnest sentiment tempered by sardonic humor and sharp cultural observation. The book begins with a Columbine-like shooting at a Vancouver high school, viewed from the dual perspectives of seniors Jason Klaasen and Cheryl Anway. Jason and Cheryl have been secretly married for six weeks, and on the morning of the shooting, Cheryl tells Jason she is pregnant. Their situation is complicated by their startlingly deep religious faith (as Cheryl puts it, "I can't help but wonder if the other girls thought I used God as an excuse to hook up with Jason"), and their increasingly acrimonious relationship with a hard-core Christian group called Youth Alive!
After Cheryl is gunned down, Jason manages to stop the shooters, killing one of them. He is first hailed as a hero, but media spin soon casts him in a different light. This is a promising beginning, but the novel unravels when Jason reappears as an adult and begins an odd, stilted relationship with Heather, a quirky court reporter. Jason disappears shortly after their relationship begins, and Heather turns to a psychic named Allison to track him down in a subplot that meanders and flags. Coupland's insight into the claustrophobic world of devout faith is impressive—one of his more unexpected characters is Jason's father, a pious, crusty villain who gradually morphs into a sympathetic figure—but when he extends his spiritual explorations to encompass psychic swindles, the novel loses its focus. Coupland has always been better at comic set pieces than consistent storytelling, and his lack of narrative control is particularly evident here. Noninitiates are unlikely to be seduced, but true believers will relish another plunge into Coupland-world. Author tour.

May 15, 2003
Coupland's eighth novel begins well enough with the charming, posthumous musings of adolescent Cheryl, briefly and secretly married to her steady, Jason, before she and her unborn child meet random death in a Columbine-style cafeteria massacre. Her widower picks up the narrative a decade later, opining on his lost faith and the death of his brother in a car crash, until he, too, is lost through one of several haphazard plot twists. His snappish girlfriend, Heather, picks up the story with her attempts to reach him in this world or the next before handing the mike to Jason's fundamentalist father, Reg, for the coda. The use of multiple first-person narrators ill befits the sketchily similar characters, who typically serve as mouthpieces for this author's trademark brand of cultural commentary-in this case rather trite meditations on loss, suffering, fate, God, and free will. Coupland's observations show little of the frenetic abandon and cleverness of his antic early works (Generation X, Shampoo Planet), making it hard to sense the point of all this or to enjoy the lack of one. Purchase as needed for diehard fans who haven't yet moved on to Haruki Murakami and Chuck Palahniuk.-David Wright, Seattle P.L.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2003
Coupland, author of the cult favorite "Generation X "(1991), tells the story of a Columbine-like shooting from the perspectives of four narrators. First, there's Cheryl, killed in the shooting, who speaks from the afterlife. Then there's her boyfriend, Jason, who writes of living under a cloud of suspicion and surviving the cruelty of his radically Christian father, Reg. A woman whom Jason meets a decade after the shooting, Heather, narrates the third part, and the inflexible, evangelical Reg closes out the story. Coupland handles the diverse narrative voices impressively: Cheryl is endowed with a creepy mix of teen naivete and heavenly wisdom, and Reg writes with the complex syntax of a man who has read the Psalms one too many times. Unfortunately, Coupland's own ruminations on the theology of evil get in the way of his characters, draining the novel of much of its power. Still, there's enough here to interest Coupland's fans, who remain numerous even though his later books have not lived up to the promise of his early successes. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)