The Beach

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Summary: The Beach, and books like it.
Review: This is one of the best books I have read. It is a joy to read, easy and fast paced. If you have seen the movie, read the book. The movie is only good for the images and the soundtrack, but the book is wonderful. I have been searching for books that read like it, but have not found many. I would recommend "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" as it gives a lively view of the South. It is well written too. I read Garland's other book, the Tesseract, but was not impressed with it. If you found any other books like this, please share...

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Summary: The Beach is an amazing novel!
Review: I read The Beach just a few days ago and thought it to be one of the best contemporary novels available. The plot, characters and climax are all very well written. This book has a lot of action, romance and creativity. This novel somewhat parallel's William Gerald Golding's "Lord of the Flies" in the aspects of paradise lost and troglodytic behavior due to isolation. I guarantee anyone reading this novel will enjoy it; I sure did!

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Summary: Paradise and its discontents
Review: It's telling that Alex Garland's debut novel has become a cult favorite among the same vacuous subpopulation of travelers that he spends much of this book lambasting. There's something impoverished about The Beach: reading it fails to provide the kind of "authentic experience" for which Garland's 20something characters are questing. Though I launched into this book looking for a subtext about rootlessness and the search for purpose among the gypsy backpackers that symbolize ALL of us GenXers, that idea went undeveloped. No idea, no theory, undergirds this book to give it structure or purpose. Undeveloped too are Garlands characters; they descend into madness and their lives hang in the balance, ho hum. You can't gasp when you don't give a damn. Finally, The Beach fails to portray a paradise that is very compelling: the commune that is the focus of this book is more of a tropical work camp, no one has interesting conversations or does much save for get stoned and play Tetris, and most of the members don't seem to get along. Though I'm two years younger than Garland, I felt that this book was somehow aimed at a teenage audience, or for some generation coarser and more emotionally stillborn and lobotomized than my own. Life's a beach, indeed....

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Summary: Donkeyfoot
Review: Truly awesome! This first book from Alex Garland deserves to be ranked right up there with such youth angst novels as Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" and Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange". A thrilling read from the get-go and deserving of all accolades bestowed upon it. Garland's characters are not devoid of substance, but rather deftly crafted as naiive, idealistic, and (important for the novel) mysterious. Perhaps none more so than Richard. As the protagonist, he carries the reader on his back all the way to the beach utopia and back out, never fully revealing himself. As we make our escape, we are relieved to be fleeing the nightmare, but saddened by the realization that the book is coming to an end. A truly remarkable read!

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Summary: better than most modern fiction.
Review: Let me just start by saying that I loved the book. It was the fastest well written book that I have read. I hear some people claiming that there was a lack of character development. Personally, I feel that these readers are too dependant on the heavy-handed writing style that is so dominant these days. One can tell a lot about a person by what video games he plays. Or I could be dead wrong. Maybe the book was terrible and I just miss Thailand.

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Summary: Nirvana meets Viet nam
Review: From this book's first pages, this story takes you out of the comfort of your home and slams you into a foreign country on a bus to god knows where.You have to admire someone with courage enough to shed the security of the western life-style and subject themselves to whatever comes down the pike. But this is what a small, select group of young adults have done. What they found is the ultimate beach on a secluded island in Thailand. Basically, only a select few have ever been granted access to the island, it's location is fiercely guarded. A young man, Richard, stumbles into a situation where the island's location is mapped out on a homemade crayola colored drawing. Intrigued, he shares the map with another french couple and from that moment on their lives are at risk. The novel reads crisply, shockingly and brutally realistic. There are near-drowning scenes that felt so intense I had to stop reading. Rarely have I read a novel of this caliber, where the author writes on so many different levels. The Beach is an exquisite novel, and when the author describes what the secret beach looks like it, one can truly see nirvana. This is a place many of us go to in our dreams, but what happens to these kids is no dream.

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Summary: Flawed. <Spoilers>
Review: I found this book to be interesting, although not compelling. The character development needs a lot of work here. Worse for me, however, were the final scenes. Throughout the entire book, I was hoping above all hopes that the ending wouldn't fall back on the use of the derivative "everyone goes stark-raving mad and pounces on Richard" cliche. But disappointingly, that is exactly what Garland did, which I think is a predictable mistake for a novice author. If Garland were more creative and experienced, he could have written a truly unique novel.

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Summary: !Exciting!
Review: Almost seemed autobiographical. You can't write that kind of description without actually being there! I think Alex Garland has realized every backpackers dream of putting their memories or visions into print. Good on you! Altho, I found the book lacking in character development, I still enjoyed it, and found it a page turner. The episode in the cave was horrifying and the shark attack equally so. I have experienced first hand what it is like to live with a group of people in a remote, isolated area, and it truly works you over psychologically. The book reminded me of that experience and I could relate. A great first book for Alex Garland, and to have it made into a movie, not many authors get that kind of recognition! Good for him, I look forward to reading Tesseract.

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Summary: great book!
Review: I read The Beach in 9th grade for school in an extra credit group. Ever since then I've loved it. The plot is a modern "Lord of the Flies" which reaches out to people from our generation to teach us that there is no such thing as a utopia. No matter where you go, people are the same and no change of environment will change our natuures to destroy our surroundings. The Beach's main charecter, Richard, is a great narrator for the story, and Garland's writning style is brilliantly engaging. When I read articles on the movie last year, I was estatic...until I finished reading them and saw that Leo was going ot be Richard. "That idiot actor will ruin the story" I htought to myself. I was surprised. The movie was horrible compare to the book, but not b/c of Leo. Rather, b/c one of the most important charecters, Jed, was not present in the movie! What were they thinking! I strongle recommend this book

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Summary: Airport read or good novel?
Review: This book has an identity crises between being a good novel or an airport read, and thus does not fully succeed at either. The writing and character development are not worthy of a great novel, but yet the story is somewhat anticlimactic and not enough of a page turner for a great airport read. I would almost have preferred the book if it was a bit trashier! On my flight, I wanted to be turning the pages like I did when I read, say, The Firm....but instead I read some chapters, sometimes interested, sometimes not...put it down for a half hour...skimmed the airline magazine..picked it up again, etc. Also, while I think it does authors a disservice to harp on the "first novel" syndrome [as there have been many amazing first novels]...I'll do it anyway: perhaps the character development will come with Garland's future writing. For example, it seemed as if the main character struggled with his own moral leanings throughout the book...yet this issue wasn't developed enough. All and all though, it was a good effort, with a nice comic tone and enough pace to make me finish it.