This is a popular book from the early 1980's that I never got around to reading until now. It's the first book by Paul Theroux that I've read. It's my understanding that he first became famous for his travelogue "The Great Railway Bazaar (1975)." He's written a number of novels since and most (maybe all) are fictionalized travelogues by having their characters end up in some exotic and isolated corner of the world. That's certainly the case with this book. One aspect of the novel that comes up short for me is that Allie Fox overpowers every other character in the story. He's a cue ball that strikes all the other balls on the table, moving them but only in relation to him. I anticipated Charlie asserting himself more and mounting a battle of wills against his father as his decision making becomes more questionable, but this expectation was entirely of my own design and unfair to criticize the author for. The Mosquito Coast may be best appreciated as a journal written by Charlie and documenting how, like America's action in Vietnam, Americans enter the jungle with too many resources, too many ideas and little by little, go insane. The Fox family crossing the desert from California into Mexico with the help of a coyote in the AppleTV+ series, The Mosquito Coast. Paul Theroux applauds this change from his novel: "The irony of someone sneaking into Mexico!" Courtesy of AppleTV+. Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the third of seven children, [3] and son of Catholic parents; his mother, Anne (née Dittami), was Italian American, and his father, Albert Eugene Theroux, was of French-Canadian descent. [4] [5] His mother was a former grammar school teacher and painter, [6] and his father was a shoe factory leather salesman for the American Leather Oak company. [6] [7] Theroux was a Boy Scout and ultimately achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. He is the father of English-American authors and documentary filmmakers Marcel and Louis Theroux, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux, and uncle of the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux.

An idealistic inventor, disgusted with the corruption of the industrial world, uproots his family to Latin America. When the U.S. government tries to catch them, they take a dangerous quest through Mexico to flee the U.S. government and find safety. Escaping the explosion, Allie leads his family and Mr. Haddy through the jungle to Sico River, determined to move even further from civilization, and become less dependent on technology. They borrow a boat from a Miskito and float down to Brewers Lagoon where Mr. Haddy's mother lives in a nearby village. Mr. Haddy gave directions to the Laguna Miskita, 'it so small, when you gets there you ain't believe you there', which sounds ideal to Allie. On arrival they convert an abandoned dugout into a hut, beachcombing for materials (including an outboard motor which Allie repairs) and planting crops on the shore, achieving total self-sufficiency. Then the rainy season starts, and a storm surge from a tropical cyclone washes away all their work. Mr. Haddy arrives under cover of night and gives Charlie a drum of gasoline and spark plugs, which he knows Allie would not accept; Charlie hides them on the shore. Allie finds them and determines to use the supplies to sail upstream, against the flow "that Mosquito Coast is a dead loss...there's death down there...Everything broken, rotten and dead is on that stream and being pulled down to the coast... I've been fighting the current all along". Charlie and his brother Jerry want to return to the United States, but Allie tells them that it has been destroyed. He was skeptical of the government being able to help. He was a pious man, but anti-clerical, and thought priests had it easy—they had housekeepers. He found television vulgar, the newspapers vulgar, Why not? Popular culture is offensive. Allie has that side of him that believes, "We can do better." But Allie goes too far, makes mistakes. My father was a very benign and admirable figure. Sort of the good side of Allie Fox. What's the fatal flaw in Allie Fox's dreams of starting over? Paul Theroux in: Fleming, Mike Jr. (January 12, 2023). " 'The Mosquito Coast' Author Paul Theroux Explains How A Third Season Renewal Of Apple TV+ Drama Would Lead To His 1981 Novel & Peter Weir's Harrison Ford-Helen Mirren Film". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on January 15, 2023 . Retrieved January 15, 2023. Margot, Dina, and Charlie believe what Allie tells them in large part because Allie has constructed a world in which the most urgently necessary information comes from Allie. He’s the father, God, the church, and the media rolled into one, demanding (and receiving) trust and adoration even as he rails against the decadence and corruption of post-industrial American serfdom and impulsively quits his job at a GMO-like corporate farm because his manager won’t spend a lot of money licensing the ice-manufacturing machine that he’s created. (How unintentionally weird it is to watch this rabidly anti-capitalist show on a streaming platform owned by Apple, which has repeatedly been accused of exploitative labor practices in its factories.)The inconsistencies mount in a generally unconvincing series. But the cast is so much better than the material. Melissa George is a standout as the pained mother who often stays silent but says so much more with the tremors in her lips. The young Logan Polish is striking as Dina, the emotionally vulnerable teen whose eyes constantly scan and search as if trying to find something or someone that can make her feel secure, or at least tell her what’s going on.

Paul Theroux in London-by-the-Thames, 1988. He is the author of 57 books, both novels and works of travel literature. "Every good thing has come from The Mosquito Coast," he says, "and it was 40 years ago exactly. Nancy Ellison In the TV adaptation, Central America has been replaced by Mexico, an ironic reverse migration, and the impetus for the family's departure is bigger than just Allie's obsessions. There is a mysterious, deep-state layer: The US government is after Allie. The reasons are left tantalizingly unexplained in season one (but almost surely have to do with something much bigger than his latest invention, a machine that makes ice using fire). The series is a noir-ish, stylishly photographed, slow-motion nail-biter, with atmospheric echoes of the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu. What was your inspiration for The-Mosquito-Coast-the-novel ? But let’s not be mislead by this idyllic picture. Neither America is so spoilt and devilish nor the brave new world that wonderful and flawless. The story revolves around the danger illusion of creating new life, endurance and human ability to adapt for new circumstances. Nature, its beauty and toughness at the same time clashes with the man who broke with life in the civilization jungle and went into the real one to make a new civilization. a b Interview with Eleanor Wachtel, CBC Radio, 30th International Festival of Authors, Toronto, October 25, 2009. Thomas R. Edwards in The New York Times praises the book, concluding "It is, characteristically, a fine entertainment, a gripping adventure story, a remarkable comic portrait of minds and cultures at cross-purposes...This excellent story, is an impressively serious act of imagination." [5]

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Daniel Raymont as Guillermo Bautista (season 2), the drug lord of an influential Central American gang whose dying father owns the land Casa Roja is built on.

My introduction to the fiction of Paul Theroux is The Mosquito Coast and readers in search of the Great American Novel would be hard pressed to find a more thrilling definition of the term. Not that there haven't been novels of high literary merit set in mundane locations, but the Great American Novel takes its characters on a great journey--physically, spiritually, often both--and says something definitive about the U.S.A. in the era in which it is set. Published in 1982, this novel achieves that, introducing an ingenious but self-destructive man whose obsessions drag his family off the map, where he's determined to keep gambling on his grandiose ideas until he has nothing left to lose. If Harrison Ford slowly revealed the depths of Allie’s mania in the film, Justin Theroux gives him a shorter fuse and plays him with his ego closer to the surface; that’s good for ratcheting up the intensity of these episodes, but perhaps doesn’t leave much room for unravelling in a second season. It also positions George to deliver the more intriguing and enigmatic performance. There are moments in which the actress wordlessly gives us glimpses of what Margot finds enticing and scary about her husband. In this take on the character, Margot has real agency in navigating the nomad life the Foxes are living — and Mosquito Coast is nothing if not Nomadland with lots and lots of artificial complications — and the always-interesting George avoids letting us come to easy conclusions as to whether that’s a good or bad thing. There’s a comparably challenging dynamic that Polish and Bateman have to play, as their characters both admire and doubt — frequently at once — a man who may only admire himself. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc". December 5, 2009. Archived from the original on December 5, 2009.

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Another book connection" "A Perfect Spy," John Le Carre's fictionalized memoir of his own narcissist-father. "Heart of Darkness" is also an obvious connection. Setting off on a big international trip, I asked an eighty-year-old man with the reputation of being a wise counselor for his input on my destination options. I was obsessing over this decision. He responded, "The place doesn't matter, because wherever you go, there you'll be." He was hinting at the annoying truth that my character, not places or circumstances, was hindering my spiritual journey. He was absolutely right.