The Beach

Rating:
Summary: Too crazy for circles!
Review: Alex Garlands debut is without doubt the finest novel of the 90's. Its perfectly crafted stucture and invigorating narrative make it impossible to put down. The prose is first rate, never dwindling and the characters succeed in being both realistic and bizarre.

I think everyones favourite character is Richard. I dont think I've ever felt more intimate with a first person narrator (No-not even in Catcher in the Rye). His amorality and crazed imagination make him irrisitable to the reader. His relationship with Jed is both entertaining and gripping. My favourite chapter is when they are together in the hospital tent- "You see Daffy when you see me"- its incredibly haunting!

Please dont let "The Beach" movie put you off this gem of a novel. Actually, in regards to the film I'd like to say I thought the direction and acting were excellent, but the awful screenplay let it down. There is a good reason that Richard doesn't get the girl in the book! And why re-write such a powerful ending? Philistines.

In regards to Alex Garlands second novel "The Tesseract" I can tell you that it is nothing like "The Beach" in terms of style- but it is equal in excellence!!

Rating:
Summary: forget the movie--please.
Review: i picked this book up when it was first released on a whim, and it's been one of the most worthwhile purchases i've made. i was completely engrossed in this novel; in fact, while there are many books that i've read more than once, this is the first one where after finishing the last page, i immediately turned the book over and began reading it again. please don't judge this book by the movie's treatment of it. the movie only served to hack out the book's soul and replace it with sex scenes.

Rating:
Summary: Average
Review: This book is a very quick and enjoyable read. The only reason I even considered reading this book is because I'm going to Thailand for 3 weeks and a friend mentioned that the movie was filmed in the area we'll be staying. It was fun to read about some of the places we'll be. I got the feeling that the author was trying to write 'Lord of the Flies' for the X-generation. The best way to describe the book is a cross between 'Lord of the Flies', 'Apocalypse Now' and every other Vietnam movie made. The author makes many references to Vietnam. I haven't seen the film yet, but I think this could make a better film script than a book. The first third of the book was very interesting as the author sets up the environment. The middle gets a little bogged down especially as the main character has weird conversations with his conscience in the form of another character that dies early in the book. I got the feeling that the author was trying to say something deep about human nature, society, etc, but it doesn't come across. The ending was very exciting and would make a good film ending, but in the book it wasn't a surprise. From about half way though the book I knew what was going to happen the only question was who was going to die and who wasn't. Overall, I only enjoyed the book because it's about an area that I'm going to visit. As a reader born one year before the author, I didn't find that he had anything profound to tell me about my generation although it certainly seems like he tried. I would only recommend this to people either visiting or returning from Thailand it has very little to offer other than a decent story.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Travel Writing
Review: Here's the quick synopsis: Richard, a 24 yo Englishman, escapes heartaches and realities at home by backpacking in Thailand (and it's written in the 1st, and told as if he's sitting around, writing a biography). He hooks up with a French couple and they travel to a legendary beach on an island in the Thai Marine Park (where they join a colony). Richard talks to a dead man, lusts after Francoise, and recons the dope farmers who live on the other side of the island -- things quickly go wrong (surprise, surprise). It's like watching war films and listening to the doors ... throw in a bit of discontented 90s youth and there you go.

When I recommend this book, I quite often get the "Oh the Leo Beach movie" stare of disdain. It's very much more than that. This is an intelligent novel that examines the intersection of Vietnam war films on a generation of people who have lived without war, the elite repulsion Westerners have for the "Disneyification" of Third and Second World nations, and the ethnocentric enclaves created within "foreign" territories.

This book functions on two levels: as an enjoyable quick read for someone who is looking for a pop culture punch of action and as a text that deserves a closer observation.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: Unfortunately, I saw the movie before reading this book. All I can say is that the book is much better than it's cinematic counterpart. I was given this book by my parents before a four month trip to Africa.......I know, not Asia, but still - it was a huge trip. By the time I arrived in Zambia - 40 hours later - I had finished the book, and was looking forward to reading it again. The book drew me in by page two, and it was by best friend in the numerous airports where I had stop-overs.

I feel it important for others to read the book before watching the film, because the differences are so numerous that they get confusing.

The novel starts off with the protagonist disembarking from his airplane in Bangkok.....and the story takes off from there. The reader is taken on a whirl-wind journey through Thailand, and eventually...to the Beach itself. One can almost smell the tanning lotion, feel the cooling breeze, and see the palm trees swaying on the beach side.

Although one review on the cover of the book says it is a novel for all ages, I don't believe this to be true. So many words and phrases are from the younger (under 30) generation. While I was in Africa, I had my Aunt read it, and her reponse was "It was ok....but it's written for the drug-crazy, pop-cultured youth".

Regardless of her comments - I loved it! It made for excellent pool-side reading, and I read it two more times when I was down there - and I never got bored of it. Truly AWESOME!

Rating:
Summary: Reality and Its Discontents
Review: This is a thoroughly enjoyable and intriguing book. The premise -- a"lost" island somewhere off the coast of Thailand, appealsto the adventurer in each of us; but the reality once the islandappears appeals in a different way, to the utopian in each of us. Freeland, free love, few obligations, and a great deal ofrelaxation. There's just a few things wrong ...

This is one of myfavorite books of the last year....

Rating:
Summary: May you never find what you are looking for
Review: The beginning of the novel is exciting. Describing the backpacker scene in Bangkok, and the death of the mysterious traveler with his story of a legendary Beach, untouched by human hands, that everyone is looking for. This searching for a Shangri La in exotic surroundings describes the state of mind of the young long distance backpacker very well, where Shangri La or the Beach can be a symbol for a lot of things. Once the Beach is found though it turns out to be a dissapointment. It's the searching for the unknown that was fun. The Beach turns out to be populated by your average collection of travelers you meet on the road. And after an initial spell of the ecxitement caused by the meeting of like-minded people, they turn out to be rather irritating and pretty boring. This is exactly what happens with the novel too. There isn't a lot to do on the Beach either. Reader, may you never find what you are looking for!

Rating:
Summary: The beginning shows promise but the ending is muddled
Review: The Beach is the perfect book to read if you are backpacking in Asia which is exactly what I was doing when I picked this novel up. The dialogue is sharp and the novel is impressive in its intensity and in its commentary on the pursuit of the exotic. This young, first time novelist has captured much of the controversy that exists in Asian tourism. Many westerners long for and, in some cases, expect the true untouched "exotic" when they travel to Asia. Of course, the irony lies in the fact that once they discover the "exotic" it is no longer truly undiscovered and hence it loses some of its allure. The weaknesses of this novel include a disjointed ending and a tendency to borrow plots from other books such as the classic island suspense novel, Lord of the Flies. Richard, however, is an engaging character as are his friends in the island community.

Rating:
Summary: You've been here before...
Review: If you let Chuck Palahniuk read Lord of the Flies and then gave him two days to transcribe it from memory, The Beach is what you'd get.

That ancient and much-rehashed message of 20th century literature - that we are all mere beasts with a thin veneer of civilization - is experiencing a huge revival among modern authors. The only new element these men (and yes, they are always men) bring to the mix is an obssessive mastery of pop-culture references. How ironic that these books themselves (The Beach, Fight Club, American Psycho) are now cherished memes in the mainstream American psyche. The principle way to tell the books' messages apart is by noting which class of disaffected male they pander to - The Beach for jobless twentysomethings, Fight Club for faceless young corporate drones, and American Psycho for the hip money-marketer.

Down to brass tacks: The only specifics which really differentiate The Beach from the classic Lord of the Flies are a more multi-cultural cast of characters (though not much) and a healthy dose of late-nineties ennui. Seeking to escape the crushing conformity of modern times (just like every other iconoclastic drone in our faux-individual society) the beach-dwellers of Garland's book manage to run the entire gamut of human social order in a few months, from idyllic commune to stoic republic to nightmarish dictatorship. Garland makes his characters believable principally through triggering the reader's memories of college buddies long-forgotten. Feel free to cast whomever you like in the character's roles - they have no faces but those you give them. Finally, Garland's writing style is dry and uninspired when compared to his contemporaries. A minimum of cinematic development is delivered with the usual cliched metaphors, and the required cultural references are appended nakedly to the dialogue.

In the end, The Beach makes for refreshing reading if it is included in a stale college reading list - it will soothingly pander to a brain abused by having to actually think about books.

Rating:
Summary: About a quest for authenticity as much as for Eden...
Review: Garland's prose is slow and seductive; it's easy to be lulled into thinking that there's really not that much to this novel. People jump on comparisons to other works, emphasizing the wrong things. I see more of a connection to Palahniuk (or Pynchon, or Vonnegut) than Golding. This novel is about a quest for meaning, for authentic experience. What the main character, Richard, has learned from movies of the Vietnam War and video games is that life must be dangerous to be real, worthwhile, that what we're really missing in our lives is a great war, a great opportunity to prove how heroic we are. Civilization is slowly swallowing up every challenge out there as well as Edenic paradises. It seems like everything has been done, and standing on the shoulders of giants does tend to leave people cold.

The next paragraph of this review could be considered a SPOILER of sorts.

The story, as told by Richard a few years afterwards, builds, promising a mind-blowing, horrific climax, which doesn't quite pan out, yet Richard acts as if it did. This novel is Richard showing off his scars trying to prove to himself that he's faced death, he's faced insanity, faced horror, impossible odds, because he feels that that justifies his existence, makes him real. One might even argue that Richard and not Garland that is using the Daffy bits as a literary embellishment - probably not successfully, but I find it an interesting possibility.

Even beyond all that, this is a great story and it's told well. It's not a short novel, and though the plot doesn't move very quickly, it is an easy novel to read.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go do the dishes.