Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold + Giveaway

4 March, 2015 Blog Tours, Giveaways, Reviews 15 comments

Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold + Giveaway

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold + GiveawayMosquitoland by David Arnold
Series: Standalone
Published by Viking Juvenile on March 3rd 2015
Pages: 352
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Amazon Good BooksBook Depository
Goodreads
three-half-stars

"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.

Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, "Mosquitoland" is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

Writing reviews for contemporaries are the hardest for me, especially the ones that involve Important Topics About Life. Mosquitoland is such a novel, so if this review seems lacking, it’s because of my inability to properly convey thoughts. But I’ll humor you.

The running motto of Mosquitoland is “Mim is not okay,” and she really isn’t. She’s a hot mess, if I’m being perfectly honest. The girl has had a rough life, one that many teens her age have to deal with: she’s watched her family crumble and it, ultimately, led to her parents divorcing, her dad remarrying a month later and moving from Ohio to Mississippi. So when Mim learns her mom is sick, she steals her stepmom’s tin can filled with $800 and purchases a Greyhound ticket. Along the way, she runs into an interesting and strange cast of characters that leave significant impressions on Mim.

The strongest part of Mosquitoland, and the part that immediately impressed me, was the writing style and Mim’s voice. The novel is narrated two ways: What’s actually happening to Mim on her trip and diary entries that form a letter to a character named Iz. The latter tells of her life prior to the move and allows the reader to see what happened to her family. This coupled with a few flashbacks from Mim from time to time, paints a picture of the life she desperately misses with her mom. She also gives a List of Reasons for why she is embarking on the journey in the first place. Many of them range from seemingly pointless (her “war paint”–more on that later) to the obvious (her mom may be dying). The two narrations never felt jarring and worked well to compliment each other. Together they pieced together Mim’s life without resorting to the dreaded info-dumping that commonly plagues many YA novels.

Mim is also very pretentious, in my opinion, but not annoyingly so like a John Green novel. Simply put, she has a very realistic and fresh voice. She’s witty, and while she doesn’t always make the best decisions–because let’s be honest, her entire trip to Ohio was probably a bad idea in hindsight–she learns and grows a lot.

But back to the writing because I just realized I completely dropped that teaser and moved on. (See, I told you I’m terrible at this Reviewing Contemporaries thing.) The best thing I could say about Mosquitoland in this regard is that I just wanted to quote the hell out of it. Beautiful, beautiful writing galore.

I’ll take this time to fill this spot with a few of my favorite quotes.

I think about how quickly things have changed for me. But that’s the personality of change, isn’t it? When it’s slow, it’s called growth; when it’s fast, it’s change. And God, how things change: some things, nothings, anythings, everything… all the things change.

You spend you life roaming the hillsides, scouring the four corners of the earth, searching desperately for just one persons to fucking get you. And I’m thinking, if you can find that, you’ve found home.

I swear, the older I get, the more I value bad examples over the good ones. It’s a good thing, too, because most people are egotistical, neurotic, self-absorbed peons, insistent on wearing near-sighted glasses in a far-sighted world. And it’s this exact sort of myopic ignorance that has led to my groundbreaking new theory. I call it Mim’s Theorem of Monkey See Monkey Don’t, and what it boils down to is this: it is my belief that there are some people whose sole purpose of existence is to show the rest of us how not to act.

So those are some things I loved about Mosquitoland and because this is a review, regardless of its Blog Tour Status, I must mention to you some of the negatives and possibly confusing qualities of the novel. There’s a little controversy surrounding the trailer:

Mim has this thing she does when shit gets really rough: she takes out a tube of lipstick (her “war paint”) and paints her face in the tradition of Native Americans, mostly in secret and never in public on purpose. Now, to be fair, Mim is partly Native American. I say “partly” because her mom’s mom is part Cherokee. Mim herself acknowledges that this makes her one-sixtieth Cherokee, but it never stops her from continuing to play up the Native American whenever she feels like it. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that Mim was not raised knowing much of anything about her Native American heritage.

But even today, there are times–most notably when I wear my war paint–when I really feel that Cherokee blood coursing through my veins, no matter its percentage of purity. So from whatever minutia of my heart that pumps authentic Cherokee blood, I pass this phrase along to you: have a vision, unclouded by fear.

So from what I gather, her “war paint” is a way for her to feel strong in situations that are tough. What’s even more interesting, for lack of a proper word, is that she does seem to know this is wrong and potentially problematic:

I wonder: What would it be like if she walked in the room right now? If she found me painting my face life some politically incorrect Cherokee chieftess? What would I tell her? The truth, I hope. That in my longing for originality and relational honesty and a hundred other I-don’t-know-whats, this action, while strange and socially awkward, makes more sense that just about anything else in the world. And even though it’s cryptic and more than a little odd, sometimes cryptic and odd are better than lying down for the Man. Maybe I would tell her how the war paint helped get me through a time when I felt like no one else cared about what I wanted, or who I was. Maybe I could muster the courage to speak those words so few people are able to say: I don’t know why I do the things I do. It’s like that sometimes.

This might not be an adequate explanation for some readers, and I don’t blame them. It’s puzzling and I still don’t think I get why she chose to use the lipstick as war paint of all things (and a good deal of me would have preferred that she didn’t do that at all). However, it makes me question if that was the point. Did Arnold include this to make us question Mim and her actions?

I will now take you back to more good from Mosquitoland: We also have a fascinating cast of characters, none of which are completely good or evil: Walt, a teen boy with Down Syndrome; Beck, and older college boy who Mim crushes on; Kathy, Mim’s stepmother who Mim chooses to label as The Bad Guy; and Mim’s Dad who believes she is mentally ill. They all serve purposes that are woven into Mim’s journey to Ohio, allowing Arnold to touch on a variety of topics such as mental illness, personal accountability and even rape.

There’s a lot of that goes on in Mosquitoland and it’s pretty much impossible for me to go into it all without writing my own book, and I’ve already written so much more about it than I thought I had in me, so I’ll just leave you with this: Read it for yourself. It’s certainly readable, enjoyable and will definitely make you question a multitude of things. It’s deep and layered, one of those books that might make you consider reading it a second time to pick up on the things you missed the first time around. But there’s one thing I do know: I’ll be watching David Arnold for future books (in a totally non-stalkerish way, I assure you) and you should, too.

About David Arnold

David Arnold is a stay-at-home dad who wrote Mosquitoland while his son napped and watched Sesame Street. This is his first novel. The family lives in Lexington, KY and readers can find David Arnold online on Twitter @roofbeam and visit him at www.davidarnoldbooks.com.

Giveaway

The fine folks at PenguinTeen are providing one finished copy of Mosquitoland to a Cuddlebuggery reader.

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Steph Sinclair

Steph Sinclair

Co-blogger at Cuddlebuggery
I'm a bibliophile trying to make it through my never-ending To-Be-Read list, equal opportunity snarker, fangirl and co-blogger here at Cuddlebuggery. Find me on GoodReads.

15 Responses to “Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold + Giveaway”

  1. Kimberly

    I love it when authors use flashbacks to fill in information from the character’s past. I enjoyed your review. It makes me want to read the book.

  2. Danielle

    I’m so excited to read this book! Seems like an interesting contemporary, and it’ll be a good change of pace from my usual sci-fi :p

  3. Aila
    Twitter:

    This book seems pretty intriguing! I really like contemporary books where characters go on trips to “find themself” and whatnot. Maybe the warpaint is just a way for Mim to cope? I can kind of relate to the Native Americans getting angry at it, since when Asian culture gets misrepresented in books I want to do some bodily harm. But then again, at least the whole book isn’t ENTIRELY based off of Native stereotypes, like some Asian books are. [sobs]
    Aila recently posted…Waiting on Wednesday (#5)My Profile

  4. Amber
    Twitter:

    Wow, the writing style sounds really interesting. I like seeing characters talk/write to another character who we don’t exactly know (ala, I’ll Meet You There). I think seeing her family life, or lackthereof (maybe?) will be interesting. The writing is really nice.

    Ah, I’ve heard of the controversy involving the lipstick/war paint…. Ah, Cherokee, that’s…..original. I’m a bit native american too (one-fourth), I’m not sure how I feel about this exactly.

    I’ve heard about the character with down syndrome! I’m really interested in this. I’m really interested in the (for lack of better word) dash of mental illness this has.

    Thanks for the thoughtful review, I’m going to definitely get this one as soon as possible.
    Amber recently posted…Top Ten Favorite Books From The Last Three YearsMy Profile

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