Now is Not the Time to Panic

This was a vacation read, started on my recent trip to Italy, which involved long rides on a tour bus. It was not the best environment for intense attentive reading, and this novel fit the bill. The prose style is simple and sometimes a little bit quirky, which I appreciated for a light read.

The story follows a teenage girl named Frankie. Over the summer holiday, she meets a boy, a fellow outsider, and together they create a piece of art that they photocopy and post all over town. The poster features a poetical phrase¹ that she composes:

The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are the fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.

The posters cause a panic across the country, reminiscent of the real-life Satanic panic that happened in the 80’s. The two of them decide to keep it a secret, and the novel follows Frankie into adulthood as she struggles with the guilt of causing such a widespread panic, and with the consequences of potentially revealing the secret.

While I enjoyed reading the novel, I felt that it ultimately lacked depth. It wants the reader to take for granted that creating the poster was the most significant event that ever happened to Frankie, and also, that revealing her secret would ruin her life. The latter, especially, didn’t land for me. I never really bought into her guilt because I didn’t believe that she had done anything wrong. I think there is a certain type of person who would shoulder the responsibility, and I guess I needed a bit more exploration into why and how Frankie is this type of person. Without a strong sense of her inner life, my objective view of the situation led me to believe that the world around her overreacted to her innocent act, and that she didn’t need to beat herself up about it.