Sean Zhang/Edge Columnist

“To run if they could, to hide if they couldn’t. To fight back if they must.” The author April Henry of the book Run, Hide, Fight Back offered the main characters three options when they were trapped in a shopping mall due to a mass shooting by a group of terrorists.

Compared to other books which usually have months or years’ time span, this book was an extremely fast-pace one – it narrated a three-hour’s story with over 250 pages. Most chapters only contain three pages with a specific time below the titles, which was used to better showing things in different places happened spontaneously.

In this book, there is not a protagonist who’s the most important with every spotlight focused on them, instead, six random teenagers were chosen to be the main characters and were given similar weight in terms of coverage in the novel. Consequently, Henry would leap from narrating one character’s plight to another at the entrance of the next chapter. With this writing style, the readers’ curiosity grows to seek for the following plots on a character when Henry stopped to write the situation on the other sides.

Back to the theme “run, hide, fight back,” it was not only talking about the main characters’ choices towards the shooting, but also the way they may treat their own problems. All of these teenagers have their unique past and secrets that are inappropriate to be exposed as they touch on many current social issues.

For instance, one of the girls was addicted to prescription drugs because of her parent’s divorce; another girl had cancer which was inherited from her mother; a girl wearing hijab from Muslim community was discriminated by others at first. They all blamed these on their family in the beginning.

At this time, this shooting in the story occurred for the characters, which separates them from any supports and require each of them to be self-reliant. It is implying that they would eventually face the society with their problems on their own soon. And like the three options given under the shooting situation, should they run away from the country, or hiding like mice, or fight back to face their shortages positively?

There’s no blame on others anymore. The choice is all on themselves now.

Overall, Run, Hide, Fight Back is a great novel for teenagers or young adults while teaching them to make a better choice. However, Henry tried to touch on too many social issues in a single short novel, which made some of them seems superficial.