Mosquitoland by David Arnold Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Sometimes a thing doesn't seem real until we say it out loud.”- Mosquitoland, David Arnold

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.

Some people should die, that's just unconscious knowledge

Yes, that is a (rather aggressive) Jane's Addiction lyric to start off with. Fight me. I couldn't stand this book. The fact I even read it in the same week as We, the Drowned makes it even worse. That was a masterpiece, a future classic. Mosquitoland reads like David Arnold shit out a thesaurus. 

My biggest problem with this book is right there on the cover. Mary. Iris. Malone. God, she's such an anomaly, isn't she? She's just so different and witty and snarky and quirky, right? And smart too. Because, she, like, uses big words. Oh, and don't forget rebellious. Because she, like, steals her stepmother's coffee can full of money, and runs off a thousand miles away to Cleveland to visit her enabler mother without even giving either her very worried stepmother or father the courtesy of a phone call, only to act shocked when they file a Missing Persons report despite the fact that she's sixteen fucking years old and with a history of (supposed) mental illness. And we're supposed to root for her? 

If you can't tell, I hated her. I hated her stupid pretentious inner monologue. I hated her contrived dialogue. I hated how she acted so selfishly, acting like the horrible things she did to people were supposed to make her real. She had a serious case of Special Snowflake Syndrome, to the point where she self-describes herself as an anomaly because, and get this, she prefers the ocean to the lake. Not only that, she wants to both read a book, and go to a party. Oh, and she actually read Brave New World in high school, and also spends her lunch periods pondering the works of Christopher Nolan (because we all know he's a true artist of film). 

And here's the thing, even though she's supposedly smart and so different from the rest of her classmates because she uses big words and "reads books", there's no real sign of her being exceptionally intelligent. The pop culture she references aren't particularly sophisticated. She likes Elvis and Johnny Cash and other older artists. I like those artists, too. She makes references to The Lord of the Rings, and one brief one to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (though she calls it Cuckoo's Nest, which Arnold must think makes her sound so literary, but sounds stupid as hell to me), as well as Brave New World. And that's it. Her bookishness is nonexistent unless told to us, as well as most of her other interests. Her personality is made up of informed attributes, making her flat as the paper this book is printed on. Hate to break it to ya, Mim, but you ain't special. I know high schoolers who read classics like Crime and Punishment for fun and analyze David Lynch films at lunch. Hell, I was one of those high schoolers. I didn't think I was anything special. I just assumed I was an individual, just like everyone else. 

Other issues, other issues. Okay, I hated the letters. I hated the writing (trying too hard, says I) (also, lose the all caps and interrobangs, you're writing a novel not a blogpost). But one thing that really got under my skin was the way medicine is portrayed. Arnold must have known it was a mistake to show anti psychotics as the devil plot of Big Pharma, because he did attempt to make it up at the end, but too little too late. If a kid who actually did suffer from auditory hallucinations read this book, and saw how Mim actually stopped taking the medication she was prescribed to help with that exact problem and she ended up being perfectly fine. Not only that, it also turns out that the medication was what was causing her nausea! So really, her going off this medication was the best thing ever. What if that kid goes off his medication because of this book? It's rare that I pearl clutch like this, but it's extremely irresponsible of Arnold to include this. And no, I don't care that Mim isn't actually mentally ill. Because honestly, like so many things in this book- divorce, mental illness, sexual assault, etc- it is nothing more than a plot device to Arnold. There was another part that actually managed to, well not offend me, but just, I don't know, make me hella uncomfortable. Basically, at one point Mim and Love Interest (Beck) actually take Walt, who has Down Syndrome, to an animal hospital when he comes down with food poisoning. Let that sink in. And then later, they describe him as being their pet. At that point, my eyebrows were sky high. 

I have too many other things to bitch about and too little time, and besides, I think I've going to sound like a broken record because frankly Mim could have discovered the cure for cancer and I'd still tell her to go fuck herself. So I'll just say this: if you like John Green, you will love this book. If you don't, then this book would probably turn you off YA contemporary for a while. I haven't been this angry since It Takes One.

2-2.5 out of 10

fuck you Mim