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Loading... The Beachby Alex Garland
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. One of my all-time favorite books. Young man is given secret information to a self-sufficient society living in seclusion on an island. Things are not as idyllic as they same when he goes to live there. It keeps you on edge from the beginning. Very good. Quite shocking towards the end. Disregard the cheesy movie with Leo Dicaprio. This book should be on the classics list of any suspense/horror fan. The main character travels through Thailand and a man tells him about a secret island right before he takes his own life. Or course he must find this island and does.... but paradise soon turns into a nightmare. I especially loved all the pop-culture references throughout. Alex Garland got a raw deal by having one of his early books turned into such a horrible movie. I hope this doesn't dishearten him from writing. Looking for a good read that will constantly keep you guessing what happens next? Then you should try The Beach; a story about an English traveler in Bangkok named Richard who meets a man named Daffy who leaves Richard a map of a how to get to “the Beach” before killing himself. Richard, along with a French couple he meets in his hotel decide to make the journey and try to find the Beach; curious as to what it could be since the island it is located on is off limits to tourists. They take a boat to an island nearest the Beach and then use a raft to get to the next island. Upon arrival, they are confused because there is no one around, so they decide to trek across the island and try and find it. Along the way, they discover they are in the midst of a dope field with guards patrolling everywhere. They make it past the field and are able to find the beach. Richard struggles to understand how it has been kept so secret while enjoying the wonderful life of the Beach. However, Richard quickly learns that there are disadvantages to being there and figures out that the Beach is not always what it seems... The Beach is a utopian world for everyone that lives there. They sleep, smoke, drink, play soccer and do one job a day. It seems as if life can’t get any better than the Beach, no outside world to worry about, just friends and good fun. However, it also has dystopian qualities such as exclusion, insanity and even death. Alex Garland sends the message to readers that even what seems to be a perfect world has its flaws; reminding readers that reality and the rest of the world is never too far away. The Beach is a utopian world with dystopian aspects that make the book impossible to put down, just when you think everything is perfect, a new twist is added and you are left guessing yet again. Overall, I thought that this was an incredible book and probably one of my new favorites. It’s a good change from old and difficult to read literature; it’s a fun read with a modern twist and easy I found it easy to relate to many of the emotions the characters were feeling. Anyone who is looking for an unpredictable and addictive book should consider reading The Beach, I promise you will not be disappointed. 0.085 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0140258418, Paperback)In our ever-shrinking world, where popular Western culture seems to have infected every nation on the planet, it is hard to find even a small niche of unspoiled land--forget searching for pristine islands or continents. This is the situation in Alex Garland's debut novel, The Beach. Human progress has reduced Eden to a secret little beach near Thailand. In the tradition of grand adventure novels, Richard, a rootless traveler rambling around Thailand on his way somewhere else, is given a hand-drawn map by a madman who calls himself Daffy Duck. He and two French travelers set out on a journey to find this paradise.What makes this a truly satisfying novel is the number of levels on which it operates. On the surface it's a fast-paced adventure novel; at another level it explores why we search for these utopias, be they mysterious lost continents or small island communes. Garland weaves a gripping and thought-provoking narrative that suggests we are, in fact, such products of our Western culture that we cannot help but pollute and ultimately destroy the very sanctuary we seek (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:04 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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It's not bad, if you like books written by young-ish middle class white males, living in a Utopia that would only be Utopia for middle class white males (though, surprisingly, it wasn't full of sex, which would have only added to the sense that this is a male's fantasy novel).
There are a lot of "hallucination" scenes throughout the novel which seem to detract from the story because you don't find out why on earth they are there. The main character smokes pot, not heroin or acid, or whatever, so there is no "drug" reason for the escapes from reality; which leaves one wondering if the guy is supposed to be insane. But he doesn't act insane... so, again, why the hallucinations/fantasies/forgetfulness...
I'm glad I finished it, but I kinda wish I hadn't wasted my evening reading it. (