The Mosquito Coast
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
AN APPLE ORIGINAL SERIES FROM APPLE TV+ STARRING JUSTIN THEROUX, SEASON 2 STREAMING NOW
“An Impressive and disturbing vision of the American psyche.”—Washington Post Book World
From legendary writer Paul Theroux, an international bestseller that is a spellbinding adventure story of an American family that rejects its homeland and tries to find a happier life in the jungles of Central America.
The paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox uproots his family from their New England farm to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they've left. An individualist, Allie sees modern America as wasteful, immoral, and messy. Fleeing from materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life.
Told by fourteen-year-old Charlie Fox, who observes his father with a mixture of love, astonishment, and ultimately horror, The Mosquito Coast is a twisted Swiss Family Robinson or an ironic take on Robinson Crusoe. For as Allie becomes ever more lost to reality, this utopian experiment takes a dark turn as his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In Paul Theroux’s classic adventure novel, a father’s hunger for freedom pushes his family to the brink. It’s the 1970s and eccentric inventor Allie Fox is vocal about his opinion that the United States is on the edge of collapse, railing against everything from free trade to corporate media. Allie’s discontent eventually leads him to uproot his wife and children to the Honduran jungle, where the family’s brutal new life includes myriad dangers. Allie’s perplexing combination of real insight and unhinged egomania makes his behavior both painful to watch and hard to look away from, especially for his teenage son, Charlie. As the novel’s narrator, Charlie makes us feel what it’s like to live in the shadow of a sense of impending catastrophe and doom, which only gets more pronounced when Allie’s imagined utopia falls way short of his expectations. Full of thrills and angst, The Mosquito Coast is like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness retold as a dysfunctional family drama.
