Name: The Mosquito Coast
ISBN: 9780547525174

Paul Theroux

SOON TO BE AN APPLE TV+ SERIES STARRING JUSTIN THEROUX AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER• "A gripping adventure story."—New York Times Book Review The paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they've left. Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But his utopian experiment takes a dark turn when his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.

The Mosquito Coast

God, I wish Charlie didn't throw that lead pipe into the river and let Jerry finish the job! 😃 Mr. Fox can rot in hell!

Claire Jorgensen

An eccentric American inventor moves his family to the jungles of Central America in hopes of finding a better life

A Novel

Janet Doré

This was a tough one for me to rate! I read it as part of education in preparation for an upcoming move to Panama. Although set in Honduras, the gist of the story—disillusioned American guy moves his family to Central America—made it a worthy inclusion on my Panama book list. 

This wasn't a book that begged me to read it at every moment. I found myself resisting it more often than I'd like, mostly because the main character (the father, Allie) and the incredibly irritating mother were so incredibly unlikable and the lack of emotion had me loosely connected to the characters at best. 

One shortcoming that Paul Theroux brought to light himself early in the book was his decision not to write the dialogue of many of the characters in the dialect that they spoke. I found it strange that some characters' dialogue was written with their accent and others wasn't, yet he would comment about the accent. 

Up until the last fifth of the book, I was determined to give it a three star but, in the final stretch, it earned itself another star. With the exception of my personal frustrations described above, it's an extremely well written book and a fascinating story.