Customer Reviews

Mosquito Coast (Charnwood Library Series)

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Paul Theroux never repeats himself and what he chooses to present in each book is quaranteed to surprise anyone who has read any of his other books. In this novel, part travelogue/adventure and part American social critique, the chief character is one of the most fascinating and least likeable figures I have encountered in recent fiction. An American genius with no patience for the opinions of anyone else and a hatred for most of modern life, determines to take his family into the jungles of South America, where he sees himself becoming something of a saviour to the natives - bringing them a few simple forms of technology that will uplift and transform their lives. Instead, he plunges himself and his family into a hell of conflicts that he doesn't even try to understand.

The story, told from the point of view of his initially adoring (and fearful) son, follows the decline in the family's fortunes until it is clear that it is the father himself who is their real enemy. A tragic and deeply moving tale, this book stays in the mind - not always pleasantly - long after it has been read.

Paul Theroux's novels generally feature carefully etched characters, but he surpasses himself with Allie Fox, the protagonist of the Mosquito Coast. Allie is a husband and father of four, but he seems to care far more about his "inventions" and radical social ideas than he does about their welfare. To act out his ideals, he moves his family to Central America to start a utopian society, unencumbered by traditional materialism. Some of his contraptions work and the community begins to flourish, until his plans become grandiose. Although the reader can see the tragedy that is to come, Theroux constructs an intriguing plot that keeps the reader drawn into the novel.

Some readers may be greatly off-put by Allie and his behavior; however, he is undeniably a magnetic and fascinating force. Fortunately, the book is narrated from the point-of-view of the teenaged son, Charlie, which allows the reader some distance from the sometimes repugnant Allie. Other readers may be disappointed by Allie's wife. She plays a relatively small role in the proceedings, and she seems to blindly go along with Allie, even when she suspects detrimental effects on her family. However, a man like Allie probably would be married to such a woman, as he likes to be in charge and assert himself on others strongly.

Overall, the Mosquito Coast is a one-of-a-kind literary experience, with a fantastic main character embedded in a rollicking-good story. Most highly recommended.

I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a novel with unique characters and an unpredictable plot. This story is told from the point of view of Charlie Fox, son of Allie Fox. Allie is a selfish man who is fed up with American society. He improves upon the "imperfections" of the world with his ingenious inventions. He moves his family to the South American jungle to escape the defective society and create a suitable town of his own. Charlie relates his father's actions through admiring eyes at first, but he soon sees the flaws in his father's civilization. The family suffers many losses and eventually realizes that Allie is not saving them from a faulty society, but he is squelching them from thriving. This is a very well written, detailed novel that has a great deal of suspense. While the story is unique, all can relate to the feelings and thoughts of the characters in this exciting, thought-provoking novel.

_The Mosquito Coast_ manages to be both a great story and a moving critique of good old-fashioned American self-reliance. Allie, the practical yet passionate father, leads his family into the jungles on a mad quest: he wants to strike out on his own, survive by his ingenuity. and leave behind the mindless consumerism of mainstream life.

I thought all these things were virtues before I picked up this book. What Theroux shows is that there is a human cost to genius--Allie's quest to perfect his work leads him to destroy everyone and everything around him. Self-reliance and authenticity sometimes are not compatible with kindness, happiness and humaneness.

A tremendously well-crafted, marvelous book.

I found Allie Fox to be magnetic. There is no doubt he is somewhat mad, but in his madness lies a fair amount of truth. In some ways I find myself wondering if perhaps Allie was right. He sees the modern world as ugly, dependent on manufacturing and pollution and religion, lost in it's own technololgy. He is trying to rescue his family from a desctruction that he believes is inevitable.
Contrary to other reviews I have read I have no feelings that Mother is weak or unable to stand up on her own. She believes in this remarkable man and his ability to make something out of nothing. Her reluctance to go against him comes from her true love for his strength of character and her desire to provide for her children. We are the ones who are stuck thinking survival means money and material goods. They were happiest with their simplicity, their basic needs and their faith in their father.
This story is tragic and beautiful, it is thought provoking and full of life. In the end, I am not so sure who the real savages are.

The Mosquito Coast is a gripping book about a father, Allie Fox, who leads his family to the jungles of Honduras to start a utopian community. Dissatifed with America and convinced a war will occur, he buys a village and uses his intelligence to build many things to make the natives' lives easier. A manipulative man, Allie is able to convince his family (who consider him as nothing short of a God) and the villagers to go along with him. However, he is human, and has negative qualities which continue to plague him. He keeps on trying to create a perfect world while the protagonist, his son Charlie, attempts to overlook his father's increasing failures which lead the Fox family towards unimaginable despair. A well-paced book which leads to a brilliant climax and one of the most ironic endings in literature. A must-read. 10/10

Allie Fox is a struggling Yankee inventor disgusted with the rampant materialism and money-grubbing he finds in the United States. Convinced the country is going to pot, he burns his last bridge and takes his family to Honduras and its Mosquito Coast, to get away from a culture that hoards goods and sells cheese in spray cans.

It's hard not to feel some empathy with Fox, especially the way he is described by the book's narrator, his preteen son Charlie. But author Paul Theroux has some surprises in store for those expecting a 20th-century Swiss Family Robinson idyll in the Third World.

Theroux does two things in this book I really like. One is the way he writes about the land of the Mosquito Coast, with lush descriptions of rainforests where pacas and tapirs burrow for grubs and an eerie cave-like silence is broken by the bull-fiddle bellow of a curassow. Or the way he describes the river camp Fox and his family set up, "a twisted blue vein in the muscle of the jungle." Theroux's acclaimed for writing like this, and you might find yourself reaching for the bug spray between chapters.

The other is the character of Allie, who Theroux makes clear from the outset is all-too-human, and not a little screwy. Even before making landfall in Honduras, Allie browbeats young Charlie into climbing to the top of a ship's mast and dangling himself from an overhanging shroud. "Seasickness is just a misunderstanding of the inner ear," Allie yells at the frightened boy, at once mocking and misrepresenting the real danger he has put the child in.

Allie is a great inventor, and Theroux imaginatively portrays how Yankee ingenuity might make some headway in the wilds of central America. But he is at heart selfish and insecure, about himself and his place as head of a family he can't provide for. "If there was one thing Father did not know, it was this: he did not need to prove himself to us," Charlie tells the reader.

Yet Allie keeps pushing a fragile situation onto more dangerous ground. With every success he smells complacency, materialistic grasping, and the dangerous influence of Christian missionaries, whose gospel of external reliance he abhors. Or maybe he just minds the competition. After he makes ice in the jungle, an impressive feat of limited practicality, Allie talks about being a kind of God, only one that finishes what he starts.

"The Mosquito Coast" was published in 1982, and I sense Theroux was more than slightly influenced by the then-recent horror of a cult leader named Jim Jones who led his followers to Guyana, not far from Honduras, and eventually induced a mass suicide. Not that Fox is much like Jones externally, but there are echoes of the Jonestown tragedy in this book, and they become more pronounced as the narrative develops.

The negative thing about "Mosquito Coast," and it's significant, is it's not an easy book to read. It's well-written, but all Allie, all the time. Some reviewers here note Allie's wife doesn't get much of a description, not even a name, but I had more trouble accepting the lack of detail with Charlie's siblings. There are three of them, but you don't really know who's who and what they are about. One is actually something of a rebel to Allie's command, but this isn't adequately developed until the final third of the book.

Even when they go off with some other children to a special place away from Allie called "the Acre," there is little detail given about Charlie's relationships with these children. The reader is instead forcefed Charlie's feelings about Allie, even when Allie isn't around. I found the story limited on this basis. Surely Theroux could have chopped a few lines from Allie's rants, which are repetitive anyway, and given Charlie's separate world more room to breathe.

But "The Mosquito Coast" keeps you interested more often than not, is an excellent showcase for Theroux's mastery of his craft, and leaves you with some pretty thick meat to chew on, specifically about when people need to light out and explore the world around them and when they are better off staying home.

This breathtaking book tells the story of a man with an intense and relentless need to prove his total self-sufficiency. He takes his family to the Honduran jungle to show the world (and himself) how clever he is at solving any problem that could ever come his way. The family soon discovers, however, that the jungle is not so undisturbed or idyllic as the father had fantasized--and that surviving by one's wits might not even be a realistic idea in the first place.

Narrated from the point of view of the man's teenage son, the book explores the meaning of connectedness and self-sufficiency, as well as the dangers of individualism and competitiveness. One wonders, when reading the book, why the father has such a craving to prove his self-worth. His son struggles desperately to understand him, but like the other characters, he is so overwhelmed by his father's powerful personality that he finds no alternative to following him.

"The Mosquito Coast" raises some very unusual and compelling questions. How equipped are we, as human beings, to live isolated from community? What is the nature of cleverness and intelligence? Also, what does it mean that certain forceful personalities, "guru" types, can get others to do their bidding even when they're somewhat deranged?

A very memorable read.

It is only in a few instances where a book has affected me so profoundly. Here is a story with a somewhat reproachable philosophy, but a philosophy that I empathize with; Allie Fox sets out with his loyal family to start anew in the savage ridden coast of Honduras. It is here that life becomes a stage for great triumphs of ingenuity and human compassion, and also great tragedy. It is with this book that I listened, as did Charlie, to the constant discourse of his father, and felt the love and the eventual hate that he felt. Allie Fox was truly the modern day tragic figure set up to fail even in the very beginning. If only some of today's parents had the audacity to take their children away from their programmed lifestyles and actually learn about people and nature and socialization instead of preordained history taught to the blank faced TV generation waiting to race home to their playstations. Of coarse you can't play god or make ice in the jungle or lead your family against the river current to their ultimate doom (or salvation depending on how you look at it), but what other option did he really have? Was he to regress? Ultimately it was selfishness that drove him, and perhaps this overshadowed his philosophy, making it safe for us to think of his speeches as the rhetoric of a crazy man where as it should have acted as a reminder and wake-up call to the reader that we live in a society of banality, and boldness should not be shunned or disregarded.

I admit I have enjoyed other Thereoux novels a little more than this one which appeared a little strained at times. The hero(?) is not quite an anti-hero but his antics are right in line with a Thereoux character. Like other reviewers, I noticed the lack of character development for other folks on the island.

The interpersonal relationships vie with Allie's relationship with his surroundings and himself. He figures himself a savior when in reality he is a Don Quixote flailing at windmills. A good but in the end unsatisying book. The three stars was for the great writing, excellent plot, uneven character development and seemingly random flow of the action.