Word: theroux
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...England-born, old England-based Paul Theroux knows how to take care of literary business. Since 1967 he has published ten novels, four novellas, three short-story collections and five travel books, including The Great Railway Bazaar. He has paid his dues as an essayist and reviewer; his varied fiction has harmonized into a respected oeuvre; and he has had a glamorous payday: his 1982 novel The Mosquito Coast is, as they say, soon to be a major motion picture...
That novel saw a discontented American attempt to carve a new life in the Honduran tropics. O-Zone, Theroux's first venture into science fiction, is also a survival story. His 21st century America is a nation that has lived fast, aged young and offers life-support systems only to those who can afford them. That would be the Owners, an elite who inhabit high-rise fortresses in Manhattan. The armed towers keep out the "aliens," variously known as Starkies, Skells, Trolls and Roaches. They are part of a vast underclass, disinherited by global economic collapse and lingering radioactive wastes...
...their supersonic choppers for an unusual New Year's Eve party. Placing fun people in trouble spots is a fertile idea, as writers from James Barrie to James Dickey have discovered. Those insulated by class, money and education play at high adventure only to find themselves tested by ordeal. Theroux devises both real and symbolic trials. The aliens pose little physical risk. Disorganized and primitively armed, they are no match for the Owners' incinerating particle beam or a perimeter-protection network that suggests an oversize bug zapper...
...familiar to Harrison Ford, 43, though his latest foray into the jungle is a far swat from the whip-cracking $ heroics of Indiana Jones. Reunited with Director Peter Weir (Witness), Ford is in tiny Belize on the Caribbean to star in The Mosquito Coast, based on the Paul Theroux novel. His character, Allie Fox, moves to the wilds of Central America to start his own civilization. As foil to the atheist protagonist, Butterfly McQueen, 75, plays a native who attributes everything to God. Fox "is the kind of American who feels his opportunities at home limited by the kind...
...would have hoped that Theroux would bring the descriptive skills he has demonstrated in books such as The Patagonia Express or The Great Railway Bazaar to this new work of fiction. Unfortunately, because of its insipid plots and shallow characters, Half Moon Street will likely not enjoy the same wide readership Theroux's previous books have...