The bits of Quantum Physics Philosophy that are thrown in really got me thinking too.

“What if there are parallel universes where you’re you only different … all those other roads, those other choices you don’t make? They must go to live somewhere.”Ĭam may be a bratty teenager at the beginning, but weren’t we all? I found myself loving him more and more with every page I read, and my hope that he would truly make it through everything and get to live out his life grew too. Jude’s dying – his brain concocting this elaborate quest by piecing together people, places, events, and random snippets of information he picked up in the weeks before being admitted to the hospital? Or is everything truly connected and time truly elastic with multiple universes overlapping to the point where Cameron is actually jumping between them? One universe in which he is immobile in a hospital bed and the other in which he is saving the world, both existing at the same time? You find yourself asking: Is Cameron actually just laying in a bed at St. X, you are already thinking, “Okay, this is all in his head.” But the fantastical-ness of it draws you in, as does Cam’s growing love of life as he makes the most memorable friends along the way. So, when an angel decked out in punk attire gives him a quest to save the universe and find a cure for his disease from a time-travelling, dimension-hopping scientist named Dr. Right off the bat, we know we have an unreliable narrator due to the fact his brain is quite literally turning to mush. Otherwise known as Mad Cow Disease – a fatal virus that eats holes in your brain, turning it into sponge. Specifically, the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy variant.

Going Bovine is the story of sixteen year old Cameron Smith who, after experiencing hallucinations and strange instances of losing control of his limbs, gets diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray