Just In Case [Kindle Edition]

Meg Rosoff (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up–Fifteen-year-old David Case, scared out of his acceptance of dailiness by his baby brothers near calamity at an open window, changes his name to Justin and allows several new people into his life. He is befriended by a somewhat older–and definitely more worldly–girl when he enters a thrift shop to remake his sartorial presentation. Angela is easy to fall in love with, but frustrating for Justin and suspicious for readers. Peter Prince, on the other hand, a new friend who urges Justin to discover how very good he is as a distance runner, lives up to his surname. Justins baby brother, Charlie, knowing and telepathic since birth, worries that Justin wont ever recover from the shock of having to haul him back from his experiment with flight. Justins other companions on the journey through the six months between that momentous occasion and Christmas include an invisible dog, Peters psychologically perceptive sisters, and their male rabbit, Alice. The crisis that flings Justin and Angela literally into bed together is a horrific plane crash at the local airport. As he runs from her gallery show of photos of him in shock in the disasters aftermath, he collides with a woman from whom he contracts meningitis, nearly allowing Fate to talk him into dying. Only Charlies visit to the hospital pulls Justin back from the existential abyss at which he has perched for six months. Rosoff writes of these characters and Justins interior and exterior adventures with beautiful grace and wit. Even sensitive teens usually have more psychological armor than Justin, but Rosoffs made him a compelling hero, not a nerd.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 9-12. After rescuing his baby brother from an open window's ledge, 15-year-old David Case concludes "just two seconds were all that stood between normal everyday life, and utter, total catastrophe." Convinced that Fate is toying with him, David tries to elude detection by creating a new identity, starting with his name and his wardrobe. Eventually, he refuses to return home and plunges into an affair with an older girl. In frequently inserted passages, Fate actually speaks, and it's clear that David's fears are warranted. Rosoff's second novel, following the Printz Award winner How I Live Now (2004), is an explosive, challenging story that sometimes reads more like metaphysical meditation than coming-of-age narrative. Starting with the wordplay of David's new name (Justin Case), the author's experimentation with story elements to further philosophical questions is sometimes distracting, and readers may feel distanced by characters who occasionally seem more like archetypes and intellectual vehicles than flesh and blood. Even so, many teens will relish Rosoff's wild, unsettling, often poetic plunge into subjects of cosmic proportion, such as faith, time, free will, illusions, and the boundaries of love and sex: "Could sexual feeling be totally one-sided? While he ached with lust, was she thinking about shoelaces?" Balancing ruminations on the connections between everything are the solid friendships: "The answer isn't in your head, it's out here, with us," David's young friend tells him angrily. Readers will want to ponder the provocative questions that wrap around their own hopes and terrors. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 468 KB
• Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (March 25, 2009)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002361KKI
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,687 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, educated at Harvard and St Martin's College of Art, and worked in New York City for ten years before moving to London permanently in 1989. She worked in publishing, politics, PR and advertising until 2004, when she wrote her first novel, How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Children's fiction prize (UK), Michael L Printz prize (US), the Die Zeit children's book of the year (Germany) and was shortlisted for the Orange first novel award. Her second novel, Just in Case, won the 2007 Carnegie Medal. Meg's latest book is The Bride's Farewell. She lives in London with her husband, daughter and two very hairy dogs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, August 8, 2006

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just In Case (Hardcover)

Now that I've finished reading JUST IN CASE and it's time for me to write my review, I'm having a hard time thinking of how to describe it. I've had the pleasure of reading How I Live Now, Ms. Rosoff's Michael L. Printz award-winning book, so I began reading JUST IN CASE with high expectations. I wasn't disappointed, not in the least, and have high hopes for the awards this book will garner over the coming year. It's just that, now that I need to put it in words, it's difficult to describe just who, exactly, the main character in this story is--David Case, now known as Justin, or Fate? I guess the book could be summed up, quite easily, by the words (actually, by the alphabet blocks) of eighteen-month-old Charlie Case: "JUST IN CASE WHAT?" Or, possibly, by the photograph of Agnes, the style-maven with the pink hair, entitled "ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH."

Regardless of how you describe the story, you'll find yourself quickly immersed in the life and times of Justin Case. A teen on the verge of sixteen, David Case is irrevocably changed on the day he saves his baby brother from falling out of an open window. For those of us who are privy to his story, we would see two lucky brothers, one narrowly avoiding a long fall to his death, and one heroic for his quick thinking. For David, though, this break isn't a lucky one. No, this is just one more example of how Fate has it in for him. How can he get away, escape, allude Fate, trick it? He begins by changing his name to Justin, follows it up by becoming even more quiet and withdrawn than he originally was, and finishes it up with a new way of dressing, walking, and talking.

When Justin meets Agnes, she immediately takes him under her wing--and uses him for her own purposes, although Justin doesn't realize it at first. Justin is too busy dodging Fate, avoiding certain death, worrying about the ways that Fate can trick him into an early grave. As Justin survives day to day, with the help of Boy, his imaginary dog, and Peter, his not imaginary friend and fellow runner, Justin is unable to see that Fate is still following him, hot on his heels.

JUST IN CASE is the story of David, who becomes Justin, who melds into a boy that simply wants to make his own choices in life, rather than having it mapped out for him in advance. It's the story of Agnes, who wants to fix Justin, but in the end doesn't even truly understand the ways in which he's broken. It's the story of Charlie, an abnormally bright child who wishes his brother could forgive himself. It is, most of all, the story of Fate, and Fate's wicked sense of humor.

Although it's hard to put JUST IN CASE neatly into a category, I can highly recommend it nevertheless. Once I started this story, I was unable to put it down until the very last word--and even then I was still entranced by Justin Case and his battle with Fate. This book is definitely one worth reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do You Believe in Fate?, February 23, 2007

By 

Lauren Esposito "Lauren Esposito book nerd" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just In Case (Hardcover)

Do we really want to resign ourselves to the fact that a pre-existing, ubiquitous force (ok let's call it Fate with a capital "F") is shaping our lives? Do we then possess any control over our futures? Thinking this way can leave us stranded in our tracks, unable to move, and questioning each decision as if it's not ours to make. David Case, or more appropriately Justin Case, decides to take his life into his own hands and fight whatever force lies beyond the world's edge playing him like a puppet on very tight strings. He moves away from his family members, who are surprisingly distant and accepting of Justin's decisions despite the pleading of his younger brother Charlie, a precocious and insightful toddler. He embarks on a journey to escape the gruesome hand of Fate, a menacing and pervasive voice that resonates throughout the text, and find himself among the company of friends.

Teen angst, coupled with a fatalistic attitude puts Justin on the path for disaster. The anxieties of adolescence, including depression, sexuality, love, rejection, and defeat mark his existence, but his obsession with dodging Fate complicates his life to an immense degree, so much so that he becomes the poster boy of "Doomed Youth." But what about the rest of us, going through adolescence or looking back on those years? I can't say Rosoff's protagonist mirrors my experiences completely, but somehow Justin has wondered into my own thinking about what it felt like at that age- the confusion, the desire to belong, and the realization that our parents can't promise us eternal safety from the perils that lie ahead.

Strewn along a beach in one part of the novel, Peter, Agnes, and Justin move in search of different directions, both in their lives and during this brief excursion. After dipping into a warm pool of water and discovering the remains of glistening amber at dusk, Justin derives some understanding from the experience: "Chance. A series of events, combined to make coincidence. Leading to a revelation." Is Fate really life's mastermind afterall?

Rosoff's endearing and enduring character is a relatable spirit. Justin captures the transforming changes that happen at this age. I consider him in some ways a modern day Holden Caulfield.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars are we afraid of fate?, March 4, 2007

By 

Douglas Milstein "Doug Milstein" (Amityville New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just In Case (Hardcover)

"A doomed youth" is a reoccuring sentiment in this book, is that what youth is? Are we all just struggling with the possiblities of life? Is it impossible to concieve all the limitless choices and coincidences that make us who we are? Does it scare you to think how much your life affects the life of others? Do you feel lonely around many, or wish you could get away from it all? And most importantly, do you need help realizing that maybe you can control the life you lead and the word you see?

"Just in Case" a book by Meg Rosoff, helps to consider these questions through the experience of an adolescent boy. It's a trying journey filled to the brim with insecurity, sadness, failure to reach potential, and most of all love, both genuine and insincere. The characters bring back memories for the older reader, and are very pertinent for the younger reader. This book is filled with the idea of fate, what it is, what it means to us, and how we cope with it?

This story is enjoyable, influential, and also quite usefull for the classroom. Enjoy!!!