The Beach

Rating:
Summary: A great book to read while travelling
Review: I read this book while travelling through Africa. It was a tremendous companion during quiet nights and travel days. The book lends great insight into the sub-culture of travellers who leave home for years on end seeking a spot to escape their realities. This book relates what can happen to one such spot that has gone bad. A great read for travellers and non-travellers alike. However, people who contemplated getting away (or who havew done so) will get an especially great kick out of the book.

Rating:
Summary: captivating
Review: Brilliant, exciting, fast moving, energetic. I couldn't put this beauty down.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating, from the first page to the last
Review: I read this book while Backpacking, which is perhaps the best circumstance to become aquainted with its narrative and the characters who live within it. I could hardly bear to put this book down and when I did, I could not help but make comparrisons between the main character's experiences and my own. Giving the book an extra edge of realism for me. It is superbly written. For those who wish to simply compare this book to 'Lord of the Flies', I say you are missing its point. This book is essentially about the same emotions seen in that great work, but the perspective is totaly different. I advise everybody I meet to read this book. The further away from an air conditioned western office the better.

Rating:
Summary: Simply acceptable nothing more maybe less
Review: Garland's book is easy to read but not that interesting. The story is simple. The characters are shallow. But the action is at least at the edge of being entertaining. So the book is acceptable to spend your time if you are realy bored.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting but too long written novel
Review: I read the book in my English lesson at school but it took a long time for me to finish the novel. In my opinion the first 100 pages of the beach were interesting and easy to read. But after this part it becomes boring. The describtion of the several problems in the community are written to long but the different characters trades are described too superficial so it was very hard for me to understand the relations between the Beachers.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, pretty good
Review: Alex Garland created a real good story. It reminds me several times on "Lord of the flies" but he did it better. I think "The Beach" is the modern version. I could imagine the setting and the different people by his detailed descriptions. Now I am waiting for the movie with great expectations.

Rating:
Summary: Too many questions and no answers!!
Review: I read this book for the school and it took me a long time to get through it. Not because it was difficult to read, but there was no real tension in the book. Furthermore I would have liked to know more about several characters of the book: - Which motivation did they personally have to go to the beach? - How did they live before they came to the beach? - What did they feel in the community? The only thing in the novel I really liked was how Richard's two personalities are described through Mr. Duck. So I give the book one star for the description of Richard and one star for the description of how the community develops itself.

Rating:
Summary: It's a recomendable book!
Review: I read "The Beach" in the English lessons at school. I found it very interesting and full of ideas relevant to readers and thinkers of all ages. It has got avery interesting action and I often thought of the problems and situations Richard finds himself in. The charakters in the book are well thought out. One critic is that in my opinion at the beginning the discription of the people and the area is too long and a little bit boring.

Rating:
Summary: An awkward debut for Garland
Review: I read the novel with my English class so I had to get through it although I would have prefered to stop reading when Etienne, Francoise and Richard reached the beach. From that point on the story became boring and too unreal. I cannot believe that Garland himself ever made this trip although it is said in many interviews. To be a story that really happened there is too much conflicts and too much bad things explained in the book. I cannot recommend it to anybody else because it is not worth the paper in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: This is the book I wished I had written! It's is phemonenally good for a first time writer of 26; it would have been a startlingly good effort from ANY writer. Tense, dramatic, accessible...I could not put it down! What an awesome book!