Book Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Alternate title: Maybe the real treasure was the bus that exploded along the way
Mosquitoland by David Arnold is a story about a girl named Mim and the people she meets along the way. Mim leaves home and hops on a bus to Cleveland after discovering her mother has been sick. For one reason or another her dad and stepmom were keeping that little tidbit to themselves. Her little road trip is plagued by both misfortune and luck. Along the way she meets Walt and Beck, who all become fast friends and accompany her on her journey.
I thought about DNF-ing this book, mainly because of the way the main character/narrator speaks. She’s so annoying. But I had to figure out what the hell her deal was, so I persevered. Through the book's entirety it teases you with the idea that Mim’s aunt went absolutely psycho and that Mim may or may not have the same condition. In her quest to see her mother, she grapples with that thought herself. By the end, after discovering the meaning of friendship, she goes off of her meds and rides into the sunset. Yay.
The author clearly intentionally wrote her as annoying as she was. One line he wrote directly labeled her personality, “How very Mim of me. Chock-full of cutting cynicism and wit”. I’m just not a fan of that personality. The person who thinks they’re so much smarter and cleverer than the rest of the world, when in fact they really aren’t. She’s just a moody teenager.
Mim’s description of her movie preferences encapsulates the kind of mindset and personality she had, “I, being a rationally minded literary purist, agreed. However, I voiced my opinion that what the film lacked in the way of subtle nuances and erudite accuracy, it more than made up for in special effects, cinematography, and Jeff Goldblum goodness.”. Surprisingly though, with how annoying she is, the main character only has a flip phone. Imagine how much worse she’d be if she had social media.
The book wasn’t all bad though. There were a few good lines here and there:
1.) “It’s bizarre when I think about it. A girl can go her entire life without missing a person, and then, three days later—boom—she can’t imagine life without them.”
2.) “but for now, I’m happy just to be with him. Sometimes being with gets overlooked I think.”
3.) “All my life, I’ve been searching for my people, and all my life, I’ve come up empty. At some point, and I don’t know when, I accepted isolation. I curled into a ball and settled for a life of observations and theories, which really isn’t a life at all. But if moments of connection with another human being are so patently rare, how is it I’ve connected so quickly, so deeply with Beck and Walt? How is it possible I’ve forged deeper relationships with them in two or three days than I ever did with anyone else in sixteen years prior? You spend your life roaming the hillsides, scouring the four corners of the earth, searching desperately for just one person to fucking get you. And I’m thinking, if you can find that, you’ve found home. Beck’s words at the restaurant cut deep because . . . “I don’t know how to say good-bye to you.”
The author was able to communicate that feeling of meeting someone and immediately connecting with them. Those kinds of friendships are the best. It’s like you’ve been friends your whole life, when in reality you just barely met. You don’t know all or any of their lore, and yet you’re already on each other's wavelength. “To love another person is to see the face of God” truly.
All in all I wouldn’t recommend this book, nor would I dissuade someone from reading it. It’s a book that exists. It touches on topics of friendship and mental health. If you can suspend your disbelief towards coincidental events and put up with the main character, go ahead. Otherwise, it's not worth your time.
Star rating: 2/5