Rating: 
Summary: What a waste of good paper!
Review: A book that spends a lot of time telling a story that doesn't need telling. A bunch of brainless, new-age travelers in a Robinson Crusoe setting who's greatest aspirations are to win at Gameboy and smoke cigarettes. A book about nothing.
Rating: 
Summary: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A UTOPIA...
Review: A definite must read for anyone who has used travelling as a means of escape. Alex Garland is a voice of Generation-X.
Rating: 
Summary: return of the beatniks
Review: The Beach is the best book of this decade simply because it has galvanised the feelings of the young and placed them at loggerheads. There are those who love this book and they love it with an immediate sense of identity, and there are those who hate it, they are the ones who sound bitter. They are bitter because they don't get it. That is great!!! Alex Garland does not speak for a generation, he speaks of a way of approaching life that leaves less "Beat" people out in the cold. Forget Lord of the Flies, let's think about Burroughs and Kerouac. Yes the text is lacking in the expected depth of descriptive detail...but so what? That is what makes this an exciting book, it has a fresh style and is more bothered about riding out the fantasies of the reader than trying to impress some elderly Dickens fan. Garland knows who his audience is and speaks to them in the words that they'd use if they could write as well as he does.
Rating:
Summary: Stop surfing and buy this book
Review: I liked the cover illustration of 'THE BEACH' so I bought it... Bad move - I was unable to do anything else until I'd finished with it. Although I read it quite a while ago it still conjours up vivid images of south-east Asia, tanned travellers and a feeling of subtle tension and impending violence. Simply fantastic. Lets hope Garland keeps up the momentum he has created with this. Definite cult candidate.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste of time
Review: I'll keep it short. The reviewer who compared this book to Donna Tartt's first book has it right: they are both embarrassing drivel. Good idea awfully executed; no sense of place at all; every Thai character, of which there are very few, is unsympathetic to put it mildly:spiv or drugs guard. I get annoyed just thinking about how I struggled to the end when I could have been reading something (anything) else.
Rating: 
Summary: Utter tosh but quite engaging
Review: This is really little better than Jeffrey Archer. I found it an engaging read but ultimately wholly implausible, full of dead ends of undeveloped plot and written in a rather pedestrian prose. Simply quoting Conrad won't buy you any credibility here. We are meant to believe that life on the Island is some sort of paradise though it sounds suffocatingly boring and I really can't imagine these youngsters putting up with it. The idea that the whole thing was tolerated by some PC drug dealers is laughable. The one real moment of tension is Richard's surfacing in the unexpected air hole but that turns out to be unimportant. Lousy plotting. Hopeless. Read Sam Shepard's Cruising Paradise if you want to know how to write.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down!!
Review: At 22 years old, I think that this is one of the best books I've ever read because of the relatedness of the writing to my age group. It's obvious that this is a young author, not because we were told this on the book cover, but because his style IS young. It's refreshing in theme, a nice change of pace. My favorite part of the book was when the main characters suddenly find themselves in the marijuana fields. As a reader I felt their fear when they realized this. From then on I could not put the book down and I've got a line of friends waiting to read it. I'm waiting for a second book and hope that if this one makes it to movie form that nobody screws it up!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book
Review: Why you shouldn't buy this book: 1) Everyone you know who is 20-something has probably already bought it. So why not get them to lend you a copy? 2)Its going to be made into a film, so why not wait a bit and experience the product in the medium it is (in my opinion) best suited to? 3)The only thing more boring than a student backpacker's holiday is a student backpacker telling you about their holiday. Alex Garland tells you about his holiday while pretending its fiction (Ok, the last bit is obviously fiction...I hope) 4)Despite point 3, I sat up all night turning page after page because the darned thing is so readable. You don't want to be worn out the morning after, do you?
Rating:
Summary: Rather soulless, but nevertheless ripping yarn
Review: 'The Beach' has all the ingredients of a cult novel: an insulated micro-society, in-jokes and obscure cultural references, lots of dope and no visible means of support. I kept wondering how this society managed to support itself in petrol, rice, cigarettes and batteries?
Richard, a hardened backpacker who had evidently been on and off the road since leaving school, travels to collect experiences. Like stamps. The ultimate experience for him is a deserted island where all his small boy fantasies come true. When Daffy Duck, another traveller, leaves behind a detailed map of a legendary beach where a small community of backpackers exists in harmony with nature then promptly commits suicide, Richard finally is able to add the ultimate story to his collection.
Accompanied by the enigmatic Etienne and the (obviously) lovely Francoise, Richard heads south in search of The Beach. They arrive at their destination about one-third of the way into the book, so it's clearly not a novel about the horrors and hazards of backpacking. The real story begins at the beach itself. The trio stumble on an apparently Arcadian community that has adapted the jungle to suit their needs, right down to flushing toilets. Through Richard's eyes, we see the gradual disillusionment and disintegration of the camp into a bloody mess, a little (but not a lot) reminiscent of the climax of 'Lord of the Flies'.
Irritation was never far away when reading this novel. Apart from never finding out how they actually support themselves other than by eating lots of fish and smoking lots of dope 'liberated' from their friendly neighbourhood drug baron, Richard and the community exhibit a detachment from the world outside the beach. Other travellers are seen as 'tourists', and the Thais are exist to deal drugs, and clean up after travellers and ttourists alike. The one encounter between Richard and a Thai who is neither a servant or drug baron is, I suppose, Garland's way of telling the reader that his narrator is a pretty good-looking bbloke. Granted, the detachment erodes as the novel progresses, but I couldn't make up my mind as to whether this novel celebrates or rubbishes the backpacker lifestyle. And quite honestly, I didn't care all that much either.
Rating:
Summary: A fair attempt in a genre that still needs a classic
Review: I got recommended this book by fellow travellers on the Lonely Planet site. They all raved wildly over it. I kinda had to read it then. Only to be dissappointed I'm afraid. The endless comparisons with Lord of the Flies are apt, but if people are giving this a 10, what do they give LOTF?
It doesn't ever really grab you, and I still am struggling with what the Beach actually looks like, and what a rocketship tree is. My other gripe is that although I can't argue that this does indeed reflect quite well on what it is to have a travellers mentality, it doesn't paint the whole picture. If anything it just draws on old stereotypes and reinforces them. I'd hate to think what soeone with a conservative mindset would think of travellers after reading this. No wonder hitch hiking is not as good as it used to be. All that said, it was well enough writtern to keep me reading all day, and had enough unanswered questions to keep me interested to the last page. I'll be interested to see his next novel
| 
