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Loading... The Beach (original 1996; edition 2005)by Alex Garland (Author)
Work InformationThe Beach by Alex Garland (1996)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. ( ) 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. no reviews | add a review
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A young backpacker in Thailand searching for something different learns of the existence of an idyllic island which is not even on the map. The novel describes his jungle journey to reach the island where he discovers a secret commune of international drifters living off fish and pot. The man's arrival coincides with growing tension between factions, leading to the commune's violent demise. A first novel. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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