Teen’s odyssey keeps you guessing until the end

“Mosquitoland” by David Arnold (Viking Press, 342 pages, $17.99)

“I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay.”

Author David Arnold launches his debut novel and its sharp, self-confident, 16-year-old protagonist with just the right touch of sass and intrigue. He follows with an offbeat road-trip tale – think Jack Kerouac meets Juno – that many young-adult readers will enjoy, particularly if they’re weary of post-apocalyptic “Hunger Games” fare.

We meet Mary Iris “Mim” Malone after her parents’ recent divorce. Her father and stepmother – whom Mim hates – drag her from her home in Ohio to hot, sweaty “Mosquitoland” in Mississippi. At her father’s insistence, Mim’s new therapist – whom she also hates – has prescribed her mind-numbing antipsychotic drugs.

When Mim learns that her mother is sick in Cleveland, she ditches her new life, steals a coffee can full of cash from her stepmom’s dresser and hops a Greyhound bus headed for her real mother and her real home.

The 947-mile journey includes a harrowing bus crash, a poncho-wearing pervert, a gas-station ninja, a Chicago Cubs game, a medical emergency, plenty of F-bombs and an eclectic collection of fellow wanderers who challenge Mim’s notions of friendship, love and sanity.

Oh, and there’s a cute boy. Of course.

Mim seems much older than 16 and – possibly because of her family’s history of mental illness – almost grizzled. She favors “topics of substance and despair” and opts for phrases like “’twas always thus.” Like most teens, she ping-pongs between cynicism and idealism, between cutting sarcasm and starry-eyed delusion. The relentless volley, though, along with her endless series of look-how-much-I-know cultural references, gets a little tiring.

Even so, and even as an adult, I often found myself cheering for her. One wonderful scene features Mim in the concession line at a ball park, where a mother unleashes a slew of curses at her young children, and Mim bravely pipes up to defend them.

Mim’s odyssey, told both through her personal journal and traditional narrative, keeps you guessing until the final pages.

“I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons,” Mim writes. “My heart is the ringmaster, my soul the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience.”

Arnold’s story is rich and complicated, his characters fresh. High school readers who appreciate the works of John Green and Rainbow Rowell are likely to welcome this new voice to the YA genre.

This story was originally published March 12, 2015 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Teen’s odyssey keeps you guessing until the end."