Rating: 
Summary: Visit The Beach
Review: This book is unbelievable! I loved it from page one, but when you get to about 300 you will realize just how talented this author is. By far and away the best book I have read in a long time. Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: The Beach is Awesome
Review: This is a great quick read. The style and subject matter captured my imagination. Everybody will love this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Buildup-Poor Finish
Review: My title says it all. The author starts out with a fascinating premise and I was enthralled by the events in the middle but the ending a total ho-hum event.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating Read
Review: Every now and then a book comes along that is so good that you can't put it down. "The Beach" is one of those books. I even tried sneaking it to work so that I could keep on reading.The book is fast-paced, but full of detail. The story is exciting. The relationships between the characters are well drawn. I was very impressed with Alex Garland's writing style and imagination- this book was a pleasure to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The publicity of this book is what got me interested in the first place. Overall, however, I found it to be disappointing. I did like the style it was written in, and there were concepts I enjoyed, namely thoughts on travelling in general, and the differences between tourists and travelers. The plot, however, was a big build up, then the story just fell apart in the end. And that nonsense about mutilating the corpses--what was that about? The story had potential, but it failed to deliver!
Rating:
Summary: It read like a TV show. . .
Review: I don't know that I would recommend this book to anyone, although there were some characteristics of this book that I really liked. I agree that most of the characters (except Richard) are very superficial, but the development of tension between all the different people was VERY good. That really is what kept me reading the book. Other than that, though, I didn't really enjoy it. It felt to me like a poorly-written version of "Lord of the Flies," but written like a TV show. At the end, because of the fractured images and choppy sentences, I felt like the author merely got bored with writing and wanted to stop. This also made it difficult to follow the action. Overall, I'd say don't bother with this book. Read "Lord of the Flies" instead - it's much better.
Rating:
Summary: poor, poor Etienne
Review: Does Garland know anything about the French language? Does he even know any French people? Before constructing characters like Etienne (who appears to be as dumb as a rock) or Franoise, he might want to at least learn how to use "beaucoup" in a sentence. C'est triste.
Rating:
Summary: i couldn't put it down!
Review: the beach was the best book i've read in a long time. i hope the film is just as good (doubt it will be though). i would definately recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: back packer paradise turned nasty
Review: Great story about finding Utopia and then the inevitable destroying of it. Had a fantastic easy style and really enjoyed the characters, especially Duck. However I had one small problem with it, a bit like the lead's characters memory of the world, when I put the book down it suddenly didn't seem as important, and I found it hard to remember what exactly I was up to! Maybe it was due to the holiday haze style that it was written in. Enjoyed the ending.
Rating:
Summary: Lord of the Clams (or Trout Fishing in Malaysia)
Review: At last, Gen-X seems to have found its storyteller. This is one whale of a tale, even though it has been beached and acquired a certain odor of Hollywood hype. Garland's debut hits THE THEME for Gen-X: the outsider of moral ambivalence who just wants to observe while others gyre and gimble in a moral miasma. The central character's vision has the scope of a GameBoy. His emotional connections are no deeper than a duck. But, as he wanders through this set piece that resembles Central Perk in Eden, his engagement with these paper-thin personae begin to cut him deeply and moral ambivalence is not an option. Choose he must, and Garland swept me right along with him in the process. It was an adventure. Like all coming-of-age situations, it all seems so dumb in retrospect and so essential in the midst. Why then only three stars? First, Giles Foden did better with THE THEME in "The Last King of Scotland." Second, I am now reading Garland's second effort, "The Tesseract." It is much much better. One hopes that this is a trajectory leading to apotheosis. Too many stars ruin the suspense.
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