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Women's Fiction

The Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast

List Price: $16.83
Your Price: $11.44
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Mosquito Coast
Review: This story started when Allie Fox's started his madness. He took his family to the jungle in Jeronimo ( a primitive island ). He lied to his family. He said that America were burnt. His family believe and went to Jeronimo. There, they started a new life. But finally their new life wasn't last too long. Their new life wasn't as good as their imagination.
I like this book because this book was very unique. This story wasn't usuall, and rare. However, I was disappointed about the film, because i feel pity. His family suffered because of Allie Fox madness.
I suggest this film must have a better character. And i also suggest this film more unique and it is not a funny story '_'

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Family of the Jungle
Review: The story is about a father that hates America. He hates fat people and everything about America. So one day his father had a plan that he will take his family to a jungle in Honduras. His children doesn't go to school and they dont have any electricity in the house. Then the father take the family , but the children and wife thought that they will go for holidays , but Allie Fox will take them to Honduras forever. In Honduras they had a very hard life. And when Allie made the fat boy people feel so happy there. But when there are two bad men come there they want to be the boss. So tried to kill them but it destroyed the fat boy and polluted the river. ANd then everything was destroyed. They changed their places and had a harder life so one day they found Mr Spellgood church but Allie knew that Allie burn the church so he shot Allie but he didn't died because then the vulture kill him.

I love this nocel because the setting in the jungle is nice. And they tell about the story in the right places. It tells about a natural life in Honduras.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good but not Great
Review: 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.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: What About Mother?
Review: The huge, gaping "hole" in this story is the characterization (or lack thereof) of Mrs. Fox, AKA "Mother". She is grotesquly underdeveloped, perhaps because it would be even more unbelievable that a modern woman could be this passive.

I hihgly recommend the movie version of this novel starring Harrison Ford. I don't usually think much of him as an actor, but he did a wonderful job with the character of Allie Fox (what a jerk!)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant Adventure Story
Review: 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

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An intersting and exciting story
Review: The story was told by Charlie Fox, the son of Allie Fox. Allie hates America and believes that there will be a war happened in America. He takes his children and wife to the jungle of Honduras and starts a new life. He wants to build a better world, away form money, television and all the troubles of America, such a crazy mind. He thinks he was the only person that makes the villagers in the jungle live better than before. While he was doing the things to achieve his desire, he never concerns the workload that has been given to the villagers and even his children. He was a strict, crude, mad and crazy man.

I like this book because I can imagine what the jungle like through the story, how the family live in a jungle, the problem of the ¡§natural life¡¨ that they have to face up, what did the villagers in the jungle look like, what the house in the jungle look like, how they can take bath by using simple equipment, the type of food they ate, the dangerous thing that sleeping in a jungle, etc, it was really interesting and attract me to read through the whole story.

And also, after reading this story, I¡¦ve got a strong feeling on Allie Fox, he thought that he was living in an imperfect world and wanted to create a new and simple life in the jungle, that was his own desire, he still needed to respect and concern the other¡¦s thinking, he cannot take them away from America by his own thought. His attitude shows that he was selfish and mad. His action brought his whole family to death. In the jungle, he made terrible mistake, the explosion pollute the river and lands, kill all the fishes, let the prisoners to come their home. He always thought that he was doing the right things and everyone should obey him and also he thought that adult should not get ill such a crazy thought. It made me feel that he was an irresponsible, rude, mad and autocratic.

I recommend this book to anyone who love to evaluate or analyses the character because the character in this story are unique. And also if you want to read something that you think you will never meet in usual, want to read something new and interesting, you should choose this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Everybody hates Allie Fox
Review: "The Mosquito Coast" is the story of Allie Fox and his family. Allie calls himself an "inventor", trying to make his life better by ways of using stuff at hand and putting them together in the form of new machinery.

Tired of the life in the United States, he predicts doom will fall over his native country, and takes his family (his wife and four children) to a deserted spot in rural Honduras. There, he builds an ice machine in an effort to make all people surrounding him, even native indians, believe his way of life is better than any other. But suddenly things star to go wrong...

The story is told by Allie's elder son, Charlie. Like everybody else in the Fox family, he desperately tries to believe his father is something close to a god. But the problem is that each page of the book shows an Allie madder and more tyranical than the page before. That's what is best in Theroux novel. Allie is so simple he becames suddenly complex. He has everybody in an iron grip, but when the environment turns against him he doesn't realize that grip isn't strong enough.

The book can be divided in three parts: leaving USA, the Jeronimo village and the end. While the first is plainly introductory and the second is mostly descriptional (sometimes they get pretty slow) the final part is as histerical and raving mad as Allie Fox. This third part is enough to give the book an upgrading from four to five stars.

A very good book.
Grade 8.7/10

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: idealistic and intense
Review: as with the rest of the reviews, yes allie fox does take his family to the mosquito coast to escape the 'imperfect world'. his original plan is to get there, and show the natives amazing things they've never seen before -- and to hopefully find some who havent been poisoned by the minds of christian missionaries. once he gets there he finds its rather contrary, dead batteries in native camps in the middle of nowhere, candy wrappers floating in streams, coke cans, etc. basically he tries to get away from a overly industrialized society in order to create a new one, which definetaly has its flaws. his ice making machine explodes, killing men and poisoning the jungle for years, they end up abandoned and alone, from that point on he really has gone too far.

most people see Allie Fox as a savage himself, or a hitler type that is causing these people more harm than good. i agree in some aspects, but for the most part he was doing them some good. they 'for true' wouldnt last a week in that part of the world without him.

also he teaches some very important lessons about what really is 'real'. yet goes to such extremes to make his point you have to question his sanity at times.

all in all, a great read. not just a boring tale of a family on some sort of outback camping trip, more so a tale of survival and life away from materialism, politics and advertising.

i would recommend this book to anyone who can manage to listen to Allie Fox's ranting for 400 pages (didnt bother me much). altho the book is told in third person by the 14 year old son, charlie. most of the talking is done by Allie. so be prepared to be lectured.

amazing.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: How self-sufficient can we get in this world?
Review: 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.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: escaping civilization
Review: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" -- Rousseau

Really?

Want to know the benefits of civilization-even poor civilization? Want to know what it's like to go primitive, to escape civilization's discontents, excesses, consumerism, dishonesty, lack of respect for the human?

Want to know how a brilliant, idealistic, eccentric, peaceful person, one who understands too well the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of our contemporary commerialized society can devolve into madness, paranoia and even violence.

Does the unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) pop into the mind?

In a nature imitates art novel, one in which nearly poetic descriptions of the Honduran jungle coexit with an increasing nearly page-turning intensity, you may discover some possible answers.

So, want to understand what happens when an idealist attempts to construct a life for himself and his family by departing the US for the morally purer primitive Honduran jungles in his escape from the hypocrisies and dishonesties of civilization? And to do so by applying brilliant environmentally sustainable and minimalist technology to make a community in that jungle.

Allie Fox, an idiosyncratic inventor who ekes out his living in New England sees too clearly the faults and corruption of consumer civilization. Yes, it could be any other developed country or even those sectors of developing countries, yet the can-do American and his (and its) technological prowess provides the most striking cultural protagonist.

Fox removes his family from the morally bankrupt America to Honduras to establish a self-sustaining community based on primarily reusable technology with the most minimal of equipment and a maximum of both ingenuity and ability to use the indigenous resources of the land.

Fox succeeds. That is, until some small debris of civilization manages to intrude. It is dealt with, but the doing and its means sends Fox into a darker and darker emotional and actual journey into the more and more primitive in his flight to become free in the state of nature--with his family in tow.

This is one of those rarest of books: one which combines a poetic naturalist's description of the Honduran jungle, an increasingly dramatic even page-turning narrative, and an in-your-face philosophical view on the why's of civilization and what happens when it is injected-even in the best of forms-into the primitive; an argument that's part and parcel of the story without the least hint of the didactic.

A great complement to Peter Matthiessen's _At Play in the Fields of the Lord_.


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