It's hard to pinpoint why I liked this. Ostensibly, not much really "happens," but something about it just compelled me. Interesting thoughts on human character. ( )

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This book is about a despised lifestyle of entitled youths who are so entitled that they can go ruin paradise in Asia with their runaway numbers. An English boy in Thailand finds out about"the beach," a "paradise" on a remote island in the gulf of Thailand, prohibited to visitors. Well, that's the kind of prohibition that he's bound to break, so he sets off with a French boy and girl, determined to make paradise their own. Amazingly enough, despite huge obstacles, they do make their way there, and join a small community of other entitled boys and girls playing at hippie commune. Because humans are, well, human, paradise can't last for long, plus, this place never belonged to them, right?
This is somewhat entertaining, but the entitlement, the animal cruelty, and the racism were hard to take. I won't be reading anymore from this author. ( )

Absolutely fantastic. Veers between well-written abstract sequences and grounded realism with ease, and keeps one guessing right up to the very end without resorting ridiculous, forced-seeming twists.

In various parts I felt a character's dismay, disgust, triumph, seething anger, bewilderment, lust, smugness or absolute horror. Kinda made me long to sell all my belongings and go backpacking across southeast Asia, though, so reader beware, I guess? ( )

it was hard to pay attention to such unlikeable characters, but that's fine -- i understand that characters are sometimes unlikeable. ok, jed was pretty cool. what i didn't like about this book was its over-arching thesis that video games and war movies will make you into a delusional killer. there's not much else in richard's psyche (there's not much in there at all) to suggest his ultimate psychotic break, so it must be the video games and war movies.

that being said, i appreciated this idea of a secretly-rotting utopia, and liked how it was portrayed. i just think that this could have been a novella and i would have really enjoyed it.

also, avoid the movie at all costs. it's almost like the filmmakers set out to make the exact opposite thing to this book. if that's what they were aiming for, we must applaud their success.

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