Rating: 
Summary: Great naturalistic fiction
Review: One of the reviewers below correctly pointed out that the main character of this book, Allie Fox, bears a striking resemblance to Howard Roark of "The Fountainhead." The comparsion is apt. In Rand's twisted Romantic farce, such a "perfect" genius as Roark succeeds in life and love. In Theroux's Natualistic (and therefore realistic) version, things are much different. Fox is a genius (of sorts) with mechanical devices. But when it comes to people, look out. He's a disaster. He is so self-absorbed others barely exist for him. In many ways this is a mythological novel. It's a retelling of the myth of Narcissus, and at the end, of Satan (since I can't be God I'll destroy everything). In a few words the plot can be summed up as Hubris followed by Nemesis. It also reminds me of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Theroux has at times a marvelous way with words ("The cat lay sleeping on its side like a tipped-over rollerskate"). This is an excellent portrayal of what happens when someone thinks they are smarter than everyone else, blames their problems on the world, and instead of trying to change themselves they try to change the world. It's a cautionary tale about the madness and destruction that hubris almost always brings.
Rating:
Summary: An adventure novel for the mind!
Review: Well, I am actually happy to say that I have finished this one. It was emotionally exhausting work! In this adventure novel, Paul Theroux takes the reader on the journey of a life time, starting off in a downtown American suburb, and ending up in the jungles of Honduras. The story is about a father deciding to leave America, a country he has begun to detest, and to start a new civilisation in Honduras. He's an absolute genius, with his inventions making life quite comfortable, at least until their world is invaded by strangers. What I found amazing was the emotional rollcoaster the author put me on. In the beginning, I could see the logic in Allie Fox's ideas, and had such faith that if anyone could do it, he could. Then, through the eyes of his son, I started to question his sanity and felt myself being betrayed by his genius. I felt like the family would have felt, I think, as realisation dawned on them that there was no going back and they were at the peril of a mad man. Brilliant work, Paul! I wish my review could do it justice!
Rating:
Summary: A very good read
Review: What makes this book great is not just the message it is trying to convey, that of the crazyness and hypocrisy of american evangelical christians and other nuts building utopias or realizing their personal dreams among the ignorant and poor peoples of the under-developed world, but the writing, the descriptions of rare sights: 'It sank [an outboard engine] into the weeds and began bleeding rainbows.' of nature: 'The howler monkeys were drumming in the thunder rumble across the black lagoon, and the rain's boom and crackle made a deep cave of the earth and filled the sky with dangerous boulders, too big to see. And all around us in the wet and dark was this dark edge of monkeys.' and thoughts and feelings (of Charlie, the first-person narrator): '...Once, I had believed that Father was so much taller than me, he saw things I missed. I excused adults who disagreed with me, and blamed myself because I was so short. But this was something I could judge. I had seen it. Lies made me uncomfortable, and Father's lie, which was also a blind boast, sickened me and separated me from him.' The last quote is an example of Theroux's grasp of the way a child or teenager thinks (in this he is very much like Ian McEwan). At times one wonders if most of the book came from Theroux's mind or the 'Charley Fox' cited mysteriously in an acknowledgement at the begining of the book (in the Penguin 1985 UK paperback edition the book is classified as fiction). But in the end it is the mind of the perfectionist near-religious nut, Father (Allie Fox) that most comes to mind after reading the book. His crazy philosophy, the way his mind works is what drives a great part of the message of this book home: 'Man sprang out of this faulty world, Charlie. Therefore, I'm imperfect. What's the use? It's a bad design, the human body Skin's not thick enough, bones aren't strong enough, too little hair, no claws, no fangs. Drop us and we break...We weren't meant to stand up straight ' our posture exposes the most sensitive parts of the body, heart and genitals. We should be on all fours, hairier, most resistan to heat and cold, with tails. What happened to my tail, that's what I'd like to know.I had to turn inventor ' I was too weak to live any other way... Yes, sir, I'm going to live on all fours from now on. And that's what I'm fit for ' hands and knees!' With such an extremist, furious madman of a father, it's no wonder Charlie, the narrator, and his family, fear him as the followers of some ancient religion would fear their god after going through some terrible natural catastrophe or war: 'There were moments when we half-expected him to show up, although we knew he was dead ' expected him to appear somewhere astern and fling himself aboard and howl at us... Seabirds rested on this boat. I saw them, and heard Father's howls in the wind... It made us watchful. We never talked about him, not a word.' But also, like most good books, 'Mosquito Coast' has its share ' not too large, though ' of episodes and details that, though funny and interesting, are unnecessary to the plot or central theme of the book, like the slang Charlie's brother and sisters use: 'crapoid', 'crapster'. Or the creole character's Mr. Haddy's way of starting every exprssion of suprise with 'Shoo!', calling certain objects or sleek pieces of machinery 'spearmint', and using 'ruckbooses' instead of 'rifles'. But 'Father' oftern becomes another joke to laugh at, as after his inventors' magnum opus, the gigantic ice-maker in the jungle, blows up, leaving him like some kind of redneck zombie waking up in the rubble left after some big nuclear explosion: 'His eyebrows were stubble, his beard was burned and so were his eyelashes. It gave him a startled sausagey expression. One side of his face was pink and creased, with a sleep-map pressed on it. One eyes was redder than the other. He pulled on his baseball hat.' As these quotes from the book show, this is altogether a very good read. But the somewhat complex language used (rare words and sometimes difficult sentence and paragraph structure) makes this book unappropiate for the beach or airport, unless the busy reader is willing to bring with him the abridged OED or the 3 volumes of the Webster unabridged dictionary.
Rating:
Summary: Allie Fox: Narcissistic genius
Review: Paul Theroux's _The Mosquito Coast_ is a brilliantly realized tale of a highly intelligent but narcissistic/sociopathic man who was "born without the ability to consider others." The phrase comes from the _Journals of Ayn Rand_, and it was her description of Howard Roark, the protagonist of her novel _The Fountainhead_. I don't know whether Theroux read Rand or not, but to a reader of her novels, all sorts of little things will look like replies to her. There is, for example, the "Thanksgiving scene," also wonderfully and subtly brought out in the movie: the family sits down to eat Thanksgiving dinner, hesitates, and begins to eat without giving any thanks. Was Theroux making an oblique ironic comment on a somewhat similar scene in ATLAS SHRUGGED, at which the family of wealthy industrialist Hank Rearden expresses gratitude to everybody under the sun but him? I don't know, but maybe some of Theroux's readers do. At any rate, this novel is a stunningly dark portrait of a maladjusted man, a self-absorbed, twisted genius who fits the description of the Randian hero to a tee. Whether Theroux intended it or not, his portrayal of Allie Fox is an excellent rejoiner to, and corrective of, Rand's own vision of the "ideal man."
Rating:
Summary: an almost perfect parable
Review: I can't decide whether I agree with the above review, but one thing is for certain - Allie Fox is no everyman. In extreme vanity, resourcefulness, and self-deluded paranoia, eccentric Allie scoops the family up from their night-time slumber and sets them onto a helter skelter journey to the Honduran tropics, ditching every souvenir of soon-to-be-evaporated America, in the process. Imagine the Swiss Family Robinson sent down a river into a Heart of Darkness, without a paddle. Using a clever palette of hilarious wit and observation, Paul Theroux, travel writer, is in his element here and you can see this in every page as he paints the portrait of a functioning family unit slowly disintegrating under the omnipotent, outspoken, engaging patriarch.
Rating:
Summary: A near-apocalyptic vision for the ages
Review: Like so many great books in my life, I came to this one after having seen the movie. A rather pedestrian approach to literature I know, but hey, it seems to work. Theroux manages, in this wonderfully perplexing novel, to convey the frustrations of modern life in a post-modern world. Ally Fox, the semi-demented genius and chief protagonist of the book, is in his own way, the everyman of the latter half of the twentieth century. Angered by the country he loves and feels abandoned by, he isn't content to sit around and gripe about the sorry state of things as so many of his contemporaries, rather, he decides to just take off and start over. Having dropped out of Harvard in order to "get a real education", Fox decides to pull up stakes and move his family to South America, lest they stay in the U.S. and watch the country collapse around them. This book brilliantly conveys the frustrations and dreams of so many people, yet also warns us of the folly of re-creating God in our own images. There is life away from television and the many trappings of modern life, but sometimes there is a large price to be paid for true freedom. And in the end, who is truly free?
Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: This is the novel that we studied during Std 9 at school. I remember how together with the help of my english teacher we would go through it slowly chapter by chapter. I think it took the class 6 months to complete it. Although I am out of school now, my friends remember this book well and I would recommend. It is a very very interesting book and I recommend school students using a book like this for a book review at school.
Rating:
Summary: People are more important than our ideas
Review: Paul Theroux's descriptive talents are on display in this page turner. His description of the Honduran jungle and the characters encountered there are first rate. Allie Fox ,the father, who goes from being a little crazy to full blown lunacy over the course of the book actually makes sense with some of his ravings, but he makes the mistake of putting ideas before people and lifting his own mind above compassion. The story is told through the eyes of Allie's son Charlie. Early in the story Charlie sees some migrant workers at night lift up a scarecrow on a cross in a field. He believes that it is his father on the cross. Toward the end of the novel an injured Allie on learning that they are back at the coast: "Vultures," he said, and then the terrible sentence, "Christ is a scarecrow!" At one point Allie had said that vultures reminded him of human beings. I touch on these aspects of the novel because they may help to explain the bizarre ending with Allie and the vultures. This is one of those rare novels that can be read again and again. I enjoyed it immensely! Well worth the trip to Theroux's Mosquito coast. Also recommended: "The Old Patagonian Express" by Paul Theroux.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly readable book with a Serious flaw
Review: Mosquito Coast is a highly readable book with a gripping plot, vivid characters and lush landscape descriptions. The serious flaw is the lack of balance between the writing style and the grim, hopeless ending. It is not only that I would never wish to see a whole, generally sympathetic and worthy, family perish in annonimity, just because of the sheer folly of the father. It is also that the tone of the narrative voice does not prepare one for such a total tragic eventuality. The dark tones in the general canvas of the book are never as dark as would be required in order to balance out the dark end and prepare us to accept it as a matter of course. It feels almost as if the writer, perhaps tiring of the story and wishing to bring it to an end, did not wish to make the effort of finding a more plausible solution.
Rating:
Summary: mosquito coast review
Review: I really enjoyed the book Mosquito Coast. It was suspenseful and very detailed. As I was reading it I couldn't put it down. The character Allie really bothered me though. He was a selfish man who only thought of himself. He didn't think about how unhappy his family was going to be in a strange land. It was cruel of him to not even let them know where they were headed when they got on the ship. He also didn't think about how he was hurting the people who lived in Jeronimo. He came there thinking he was doing them a favor and expecting to be praised, yet he interupted their way of living and ruined their whole environment. In a way he was a hypocrite, for he disliked the way America was and he moved in and did the same thing to the people of Jeronimo. I enjoyed this book and it really opened my eyes to the ignorance of others.
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