Hey Nostradamus! is a novel in four voices. The opening narrator, Cheryl Anway, is the 17-year-old victim of a Columbine-style high-school massacre. Just before she was murdered in 1988, Cheryl had secretly married her high-school sweetheart Jason Klaasen and was expecting their child. The couple were part of a zealously evangelical Christian group, Youth Alive! whose members, immediately after the slaying, falsely accused Jason of masterminding the incident.

Eleven years later, Jason is still coming to terms with Cheryl's death. He is, as he admits to his faithful dog Joyce, a "social blank with a liver like the Hindenburg… embarrassed by how damaged he is and by how mediocre he turned out". (He fits bathrooms for a living.) Jason is also scarred by his relationship with his father Reg, a religious pedant so unyielding that he drove his wife into alcoholism and who genuinely believes that one of his identical twin grandsons cannot possess a soul.

An interesting book that is going in to my first Fiction Bookbox and being sent off tomorrow.

Took this book from wilksie's book box

RELEASE NOTES:

Taking this book to the meet with me. If no one wants it i'll probably take it back home....

So far it is great! Very topical, intelligent and clever. It is told from the point of view of a dead schoolgirl (I think), murdered while she ate her lunch by her highscholl classmates.

She is very serene, is of the Christian faith, and the novel is set in 1988, so topically speaking after the I Don't Like Mondays killings. It was published in 2003, so might also have been inspired by Columbine.

Regardless of how this book might sound, it is not at all morbid (so far!). Much of the main character's narration (and bear in mind there are three other narrators which I have not go to yet) is totally serene, totally in line with what the back cover tells the prospective reader: "Cheryl Anway, 17, secretly married to her highschool sweetheart adn pregnant, doodles 'God is nowhere, God is now here' on her class binder. Hours later, clutching the same binder, she is shot dead..."

But it's subtler than that description, which is acurate, but a little sensational. This isn't a thriller, but an exploration into human life and what drives us, at all times in our lives, and human relation to religion too, although that in way is pretty minor as a theme. So if you find that a bit too much, don't be put off, because it is not a pro- or anti- Christian book at all, but discusses it as an essential part of human life, whether we like it or not, whether we believe or not.

So far (at 29 pages in!), I highly recommend this.

Have finished it now, and am even morev impressed by the scope of the perspective in this novel.

I have passed it on to a friend to read, and hopefully they'll join bookcrossing too!

My friend found it and passed it on to me. I read it whilst on boliday in the Azores. A very emotional read; one of those books that stays in your thoughts long after you have read it. It also causes the reader to think about their own life in a different way (so not the usual light hearted holiday book!) which is always interesting. I would recommend it to anybody who is soul searching - or anybody who thinks they have already got there.

I have an interview for college today so I will leave it there for somebody to find.

CAUGHT IN MARGATE KENT UK

BOOK IN GREAT CONDITION, LOOKS A GREAT READ. I PLAN TO READ IT AND LEAVE IT IN DOCTOR'S WAITING ROOM...