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A review by novabird
The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
4.0
The tone of, “The Mosquito Coast,” is one of captivating dread. The beauty and the horror co-mingle and infuse this novel with such a compulsion to not abandon ship, to not be disloyal to the leader/ father/, but to stick with it to its end, despite the long, long wait for the so-called hero to fall.
At first, the archetype of a ‘crazy American,’ is shown in Allie who is both a genius/neurotic and charismatic. As he continues to reinforce his anti-American, anti-capitalist ideals, he further goes up the river into the heart of his darkness, taking his family with him to the jungle of Honduras. Initially he is the portrait of an American dream colonizing the wilderness and is successful with his spirit of inventiveness and ‘hard work,’ ethic that forestalls the progression of his mental illness. When he begins to have illusions of grandeur, this is also the time in which his tenuous hold on reality starts to lose its grip. After his delusion is shattered Allie become increasingly irrational.
In the dedication of, “The Mosquito Coast,” Theroux acknowledges, Charlie Fox as the real talebearer and thanks him for the story. Not that Theroux needed any authentication to ground this offering, as it is based in realism with the depiction of the environment, the psychology of a borderline case of mental illness worsened by isolation and told through the clarion voice of Allie’s eldest son, Charlie Fox.
A genuinely good horror tale told as a fable that examines the question of what makes a ”comfortable good life.’
4.25 The arcing, slow and long build-up doesn't quite equally weight the balancing of the plot.
At first, the archetype of a ‘crazy American,’ is shown in Allie who is both a genius/neurotic and charismatic. As he continues to reinforce his anti-American, anti-capitalist ideals, he further goes up the river into the heart of his darkness, taking his family with him to the jungle of Honduras. Initially he is the portrait of an American dream colonizing the wilderness and is successful with his spirit of inventiveness and ‘hard work,’ ethic that forestalls the progression of his mental illness. When he begins to have illusions of grandeur, this is also the time in which his tenuous hold on reality starts to lose its grip. After his delusion is shattered Allie become increasingly irrational.
In the dedication of, “The Mosquito Coast,” Theroux acknowledges, Charlie Fox as the real talebearer and thanks him for the story. Not that Theroux needed any authentication to ground this offering, as it is based in realism with the depiction of the environment, the psychology of a borderline case of mental illness worsened by isolation and told through the clarion voice of Allie’s eldest son, Charlie Fox.
A genuinely good horror tale told as a fable that examines the question of what makes a ”comfortable good life.’
4.25 The arcing, slow and long build-up doesn't quite equally weight the balancing of the plot.