Sometimes being with gets overlooked I think. Sure, I’d love to kiss-hug-marry-hold Beck, but for now, I’m happy just to be with him. Asking What if? can only lead to Maybe Things Could Have Been Different, via Was It My Fault? For example, when her friend Beck is questioning a decision he made, she says, Early on, Arnold exposes readers to Mim’s occasional separations from the present it’s not always clear what is real and what is not, which compels readers to keep turning pages. She also may or may not be taking Abilitol for the psychosis she may or may not have. Sometimes she lapses into her memories and loses touch with reality. But, don’t we all have that thing we do when no one else is looking that is probably a little wacko? It’s a ritual that connects her to her mother and is also a window into her crazy.

Sometimes, when she’s by herself, Mim paints lines on her face with her mom’s lipstick, a habit she refers to as “putting on war paint”. This blindness gives her poor depth perception and provides an apt metaphor for her inability to see the big picture. She is blind in one eye because during a solar eclipse, she stared at the sun when she shouldn’t have. Mim is a collection of oddities, and although this makes her feel “not okay”, it makes her relatable to readers who also see themselves as walking freak shows. She uses unusual, almost archaic diction, saying things like, “blimey, 17C is good looking” or “’twas always thus”. She’s brutally honest about herself and the people she meets, and yet she seasons her commentary with such witty humor that you can’t help but laugh as you wince at her observations. Her companions on her trip include a kind old woman who smells like cookies, a boisterous boy with mental retardation and a love for his Rubik’s cube, and an attractive young man who becomes the “Africa” to Mim’s “Madagascar”. But, she might also be running from her dad (”a man who has succumbed to the madness of the world”) and his new wife, who have moved Mim from her childhood home near Cleveland to one they bought in Mosquitoland for the “low, low price of Everything She’d Ever Known”.Ĭhapter One opens with Mim proclaiming that she is not okay, and she repeats this refrain throughout her journey as she reveals her many idiosyncrasies and curiosities. Her mom is sick, she’s not sure with what, and she’s on a mission to help her. PremiseĪs the story opens, Mim is traveling by bus from Mississippi (”Mosquitoland”) to Cleveland.

I love its protagonist Mary Iris Malone (aka Mim) and her musings on life as much as I love Hazel Lancaster from The Fault in Our Stars. Mosquitoland by David Arnold is one of those books. They say a great YA novel has amazing voice, with characters who speak and think in unique and entertaining ways.

Mosquitoland book