Run, run as fast as you Can

Move over Voldemort, there’s a new villain in town. Unseen but omnipresent, more real and a million times more terrifying. I am talking about Fate...Kismet...Providence. Call it what you may, but that’s what the young protagonist of “Just in Case” by Meg Rosoff is running from.

Saving his baby brother from almost-certain death should have made 15-year old David Case feel like a hero…but it unleashes a new kind of terror in the teen’s over-active imagination. Two seconds…two seconds is all it would take to turn every-day humdrum life into a virtual minefield of catastrophes.

His mind’s eye is fogged up with mental images of death (including his own) and disaster. Falling down a manhole, a car crash, killer bees, floods, alien invasion……everything from the ordinary to the bizarre whirl through his head in horrifying succession. A doomed youth, poised on the brink of disaster. That’s what he has become.

And then he comes up with an idea. An idea to trick fate which is pursuing average, ordinary, suburban David Case. He decides to change his identity.

Enter Justin Case. The new, improved Justin seems to be a worthy contender.....able to meet fate headlong with a dash of more courage than his predecessor. Along the way he acquires a new dress sense, an imaginary greyhound and seemingly eccentric but loyal friends.

But the feeling of impending doom never loosens it’s hold. It colours his very existence, his thought-processes, his emotions and his turbulent hormones. It plunges him into (mis)adventures and even makes him go through the agonies of unrequited love.

Adolescent angst is hard enough to deal with but when accompanied by a sense of imminent misfortune……it is a painful package. You want to avert your eyes, and yet you can’t. Very rightly put by Justin’s friend Peter Prince...it is like watching a train crash waiting to happen.

The beauty of this book lies in the clarity and precision with which every thought racing through Justin’s mind is dissected. His pain is a live, breathing thing and you want to either give him a warm comforting hug or slap him out of his melancholy!

If you are looking for a light-hearted read, this isn’t what the doctor prescribed. It is bleak and painful, laced with dark humour.....but it has to be read for it’s flawlessness and sheer rawness of emotion. And before you write it off as a morbid drama.....I would like to add that it has a very satisfying ending.

There is an important lesson amidst all the chaos. We can’t change fate, but along the journey we can enjoy the gifts that kismet has to offer.....namely undiscovered talents, the love of family, the comfort of friendship and the strength and courage to stand up and fight, whatever the odds.