I read this book because I heard someone recommend it, then I found out that it was set in Mississippi.
One-click checkout, it arrived a few days later.
This is the first novel I’ve read in a while, and the first young adult novel I’ve read in a longer while. Most of the reading I’ve done lately is for school, so it’s nice to take a break from that.
This book was set in Mississippi, partly, but most of it doesn’t take place there. The book follows Mary Iris Malone, Mim, a teenager with schizophrenia, as she leaves Mississippi for her home, Cleveland, OH. Her father and stepmother have recently moved to Mississippi, she hates it, and she wants to go home to be with her mom. She steals money from her stepmother to buy a bus ticket, then rides the Greyhound. Various disasters occour, at which point she’s making her own way back to Cleveland, with new friends she’s met along the way. The narrative includes diary entries, which were effective in giving us more of Mim’s personality, rather than making the book just a series of events that happen to her.
The story was interesting because Mim is interesting – she’s a strong character who has a distinct way of viewing the world. Throughout the book, I sometimes wondered if what she was saying was entirely accurate. Throughout the novel, there are mentions of the medication she takes for her schizophrenia, and partway through, she stops taking it. There wasn’t any major shift when she did, but it left me wondering if everything in the novel was as it seemed.
The ending of the novel tied everything up a little too quickly for me – there wasn’t space for Mim or the reader to understand the entirety of what happened, and it left me wanting more depth.