Book Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold

Mosquitoland
Author:  David Arnold
Publisher:  Viking Children's, 336 pages
Publication Date:  March 3, 2015

From Goodreads:
I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange."

After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.

Review:

Roadtrip, quirky characters, gorgeous writing…Mosquitoland was a pleasure to read.

Mim is wise beyond her years, incredibly smart, sarcastic, with perhaps some sort of mental illness, and dealing with family who apparently do not tell her anything. Slowly the back story is told, although there were still many questions I had that were never answered.

Alternately funny and sad, I enjoyed this one.  I would have liked an epilogue, but the ending fit.

Posted by:  Pam