Comments on: Just In Case, Meg Rosoff

By: trapunto

trapunto — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:21:01 +0000

I got here from Nymeth’s review, and I suddenly feel the urge to plaster an opinion in the comments section of a year old blog post.

This book struck me much as it did you. It felt so fraught! With the huge, mounting dramatic irony of Justin’s mental illness, I was just waiting for the piano to drop the whole time. And then when it dropped, all I could say was, “THIS IS THE WRONG PIANO!”

I agree. Some crazy people know they’re crazy. A lot of crazy people know it and hide it. Some don’t know it. It’s hard to tell the difference between the last two kinds.

The people who have the best idea of whether they’re crazy or not are the ones who were raised by crazy people. It’s impossible for a caretaker to fool a kid all the years they are growing up. As adults they feel pretty comfortable trusting their built-in, fine-tuned crazy-radar–which also shows shades of gray. Fay Weldon will back me up on this.

I wonder if Rosoff had crazy family members. Justin was believable.

By: jennysbooks

jennysbooks — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:59:15 +0000

Nah, I’ve talked to plenty of crazy people who know good and well they are crazy. In real life I know I’m not crazy, but it’s sort of a spiral – once I’ve started worrying about it, I have a hard time pulling myself out of worrying about it.

By: Riot

Riot — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:09:57 +0000

Haha Nymeth up there beat me to it. Crazy (or at least the unspecified, abstract brand of crazy) is like Alzheimer’s – if you can admit you’ve got it, then you probably don’t. I’m not being un-PC here, either. My grandparents’ doctors have all made similar comments!

By: Nymeth

Nymeth — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:43:51 +0000

Maybe worrying about being crazy is a sign of sanity? 😛

I actually didn’t know of this book. But I’ve heard great things about her third novel, What I Was.