Hello Rad Readers!
Mim describes herself as 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."
Clearly-- she could not be more correct.
After her parent's messy divorce, Mim is taken to Mississippi where she is in the company of mosquitos, her medication, her less that stellar father, and her new stepmom.
When she finds out that her mother is sick however, she gets just the reason she has been needing to ditch Mosquitoland and hop on a Greyhound bus to Cleveland. It becomes tough to determine if she is running away or running home.
As we previously established though, Mim is a collection of oddities. Nothing ever goes as it should, and on her way to Cleveland she meets some other travelers and her thousand-mile journey must take a few unplanned turns. These detours force Mim to confront what she is actually doing, and to reconsider her previously steadfast and unrelenting mindset.
Mosquitoland is a hilarious and heart wrenching story that is well worth the read!
I loved nearly everything about Mosquitoland. Mim really reminded me of Finch from All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. (That is another fantastic book well worth the read! Go check out my other blog post on it!) I say nearly because though the clear purpose of this novel is to not only entertain, but to bring about internal reflection for the reader, I still felt that there was just a bit too much of this reaching-for-depth at times. I understand that Mim is the sort of character that would actually stop for a minute to muse on the many metaphors and symbols about her life. I like that a lot about her, because that is something I, myself, do often. Oh, how art imitates life! But still, though I see the intention behind it, I felt like sometimes the constant ruminating felt like a bit too much. There was a bit too much pondering, a bit too much reaching, and a bit too much inner monologue that I felt like I was supposed to feel profoundly that I just simply did not. This of course isn't to say that every profound moment was a swing and a miss. I actually felt like more often then not it was a hit, but there is just something so cringey when they do miss that I just felt like I had to mention it. It was teetering on John Green levels of immensity. There were times where it felt like everything that happened to her needed to have a message behind it.
Anyways, that is my only real complaint, so let's just get on to the point-- this book was SO good. This felt a lot more real than a lot of other contemporaries I have read which is pretty crazy considering the absurdity of Mim's journey. It really felt like we were just listening in on her thoughts and conversations. The author's writing was so natural and seamless I felt like I was completely lost in the story every time I picked it up.
I love how intelligent and witty Mim is. She very much knows what's up. The perfect mix of rational and crazy I would like to aim for. She is also hilarious and any book that can make me crack a smile is an automatic 3 stars. The latter 2 stars came from the incredible writing and emphasis on characterization and human conflict. Mim is shamelessly flawed. She hates her medicated mind but recognizes the hot mess that she is. The people that she meets along the way are so real too. Shamelessly flawed just like herself. They help her grow, but they are not just there for the sake of the main character. They serve a purpose of their own and aren't just plot progression. Honestly, fantastic writing, showing us through characterization, through Mim, that there are more things to this world than just what is going on with you. Mim assumes this is her big journey, and hers alone, but then we meet Arlene, and Beck, and Walt, and it makes a self centered character a little more conscious of other's battles. This is certainly a theme that is extremely applicable to today's society.
I thought the conclusion was very fitting. In other reviews, I have seen people claim that the ending was too anticlimactic, and where I can understant why some people felt that way, I do strongly disagree. Sure, the conclusion in comparison to the insanity of the rest of Mim's journey is much more chill --for lack of a better word-- but that is what the pacing of the story required, as well as what the development of Mim's character needed. She was so exhausted of the chaos and the running, that she needed things to slow down. I thought the fact that the pacing slowed down also benefited the levity of what she was finding out at the end of the "road," if you get what I mean.
Ultimately, I loved the message behind this book, "have a vision, unclouded by fear." It is a fantastic idea.
This book is seriously well written and deals with tough subject matter in a flawless way. Clearly, a 5/5 star read!
Boom,
- C8 ;)