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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Aug 2006, 256 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2008, 256 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Justin (née David) takes life terribly serious -
already teetering on the edge of acute anxiety, he is pushed
over the edge when he saves his baby brother from "flying" out
the window and becomes determined to escape the hand of fate and
change his destiny. One might be tempted to write off his fears
as simple paranoia if it wasn't for the fact that the world
Justin inhabits is clearly just a little off kilter - adults in
general, in particular his parents, are clearly out of touch,
only the youngest children seem to be able to understand what
Justin is going through; added to which, Fate interjects his own
omnisciently sinister commentary from time to time, in a style
not dissimilar to
The Book Thief.
Like Rosoff's first book (How I Live Now) Just In
Case is ostensibly a book for older teens, but it would be a
great pity if this was the only audience to discover it. Reading
Just In Case made me a little nostalgic for my younger self
- not for those hideous teenage years in themselves that I'm happy to have put behind me by a
few decades, but to a time
when the ingredients of what was to become the adult "me" were
still being mixed, and the ideas in a book had the ability to
shape my thinking by dint of their very newness. Just In Case is the
sort of book that in the right hands at the right time could do
this, offering an ironic metaphysical and philosophical
meditation on life's big topics - love and sex, faith and free
will, illusion and reality, packaged into a short and genuinely
sweet coming-of-age story.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in August 2006, and has been updated for the
February 2008 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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