Narrated by David Aaron Baker

Spellbinding adventure story of a family that rejects its homeland and tries
to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of Central America.
The motivation comes from the father, Allie Fox, who is a character in the
classic American mold. A cantankerous inventor, he is articulate, shrewd,
scornful, funny, very angry, and slightly cracked. An individualist, Fox sees
modern American culture as a despicable combination of the wasteful, the immoral,
and the messy. Uprooting his family from their Massachusetts farm home, he takes
them off to a primitive world in order to escape what he considers the imminent
breakdown of civilization.

The Mosquito Coast has the fascination of an ironic version of Robinson Crusoe
or a sardonic Swiss Family Robinson, along with the deeper levels akin to those
of The Lord of the Flies. As a sheer teller of tales Theroux is at the top of his
form, but he also succeeds as a moralist with a subtle fable in mind.

The story is told with fresh innocence by the fourteen year old Charlie, who
observes his father with a mixture of love, horror, and astonishment. He describes
the voyage, the trip into the interior, his father.s invention of a giant ice-
making machine (which is supposed to bring a new era to the jungle), and all of
the adventures that ensue. Charlie watches as his father becomes ever more
obsessive, evermore lost to reality.

Download File Size:397.11 MB

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