Just in Case - by Meg Rosoff (Paperback)

About the Book

After a heart-pounding scare with his brother, 15-year-old David Case realizes the fragility of life. He changes his name, his appearance, makes new friends, and dares to fall in love with the seductive Agnes Day. With his imaginary dog Boy in tow, Justin struggles to survive in a world where tragedy is around every corner.

Book Synopsis

- Carnegie Medal Winner -

From the 2016 recipient of the Astrid Lindgren award and author of international bestseller How I Live Now, National Book Award finalist Picture Me Gone, and most recently Jonathan Unleashed

David Case never questions his ordinary suburban life -- until one fateful day, a brush with death brings him face to face with his own mortality. Suddenly, everywhere he looks he sees catastrophe, disaster, the ruin of the human race, the demise of the planet...not to mention (to pinpoint the exact source of his anxiety) possible pain and suffering for himself.

So he changes his name, reinvents his appearance, and falls in love with the seductive Agnes Bee -- in the hope that he'll become unrecognizable to Fate and saved from his own doom. With his imaginary greyhound in tow, Justin Case struggles to maintain his new image and above all, to survive in a world where twists of fate wait for him around every corner.

Review Quotes

"When How I Live Now came out, it stunned, amazed, and won all sorts of literary awards. . . . This second novel Just In Case, shows that it was no beginner's luck. . . . Meg Rosoff is the Queen of Weird."
--Los Angeles Times

"What shimmers in Rosoff's novels is a very unusual and courageous confrontation with nihilism, which, like Beckett, she makes funny, rather than futile. . . . A modern Catcher in the Rye."
--The Times (London)

"Rosoff examines the idea of fate through minutely observed, concatenated catastrophes and the intersection of exquisitely drawn characters. . . . Funny, ironic, magically real; stunning."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Extraordinary and original . . . this sophisticated meditation on death, madness, and sexuality is powerful and tenaciously haunting."
--The Sunday Times (London)

"Intelligent, ironic, and darkly funny, makes nods to Samuel Beckett and existentialism."
--Time Out

"Surreal . . . hilarious."
--Cosmopolitan

"Brilliantly original."
--Marie Claire

About the Author

Meg Rosoff grew up in Boston and worked in advertising for fifteen years before writing her first novel, How I Live Now, which has sold more than one million copies in thirty-six territories. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Printz Award, was short-listed for the Orange Prize and made into a film. Her subsequent five novels have been awarded or short-listed for, among others, the Carnegie Medal and the National Book Award. The laureate of the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, she lives in London with her husband, daughter, and two dogs. Her most recent novel is Jonathan Unleashed.