Mim misses her mother and when she finds out that her father
and stepmother are apparently keeping them apart on purpose, Mim decides to
bolt. Stealing a stash of money from her stepmother, she hops on a Greyhound bus in Mississippi and heads 950 miles to
Cleveland. Along the way, she befriends
a motley crew of companions and has adventures.
As tired as that plot is, what rescues this novel is its unusual
heroine. She’s schizophrenic, blind in
one eye, and prone to uncontrolled and sudden nausea. And the people she befriends are similarly
quirky. It's the crazy personalities that make this story work.
Arnold’s debut novel is a fascinating and original work,
written with all the color and grit of a hipster creating the Great American
Novel. The dialog is fast and witty, but
there’s not much emotional introspection (since Mim tends to barf whenever the
going gets emotional). Instead, there's a lot of philosophical navel-gazing. It’s a little too self-aware of its pretensions and
falls more into the adult-literature-about-teens category than actual YA, but kids will find it enjoyable
nonetheless.
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