Beach (UK Edition) by Alex Garland Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Beach (UK Edition)
Book Review: A totally absorbing read
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this on my way back from Singapore and found it an ideal way to cope with an eight hour stopover in Paris. A totally gripping and well written story line ensures that this book really gets inside your head. I finished reading the book months ago but still feel it's part of me.Book Review: A must read for any cult lover!
Summary: 5 Stars
From the very first page Garland keeps us in suspence. An excellent unpredictable and well written novel, a must for any cult lover.Book Review: subtle, razor-sharp demolition of the backpacker mentality
Summary: 4 Stars
Having heard a great deal of hype about this book, I came to it with a certain amount of cynicism. I am more impressed than I was expecting to be.Set in a supposedly idyllic forbidden island in Thailand, the Beach of the title is actually a rather nasty little place. Garland's cast of work-shy, dope-smoking, fornicating layabouts have each found their way to the place independently, but their principal preoccupation, as always, is to keep it for themselves.
Their ability to fund their aimless existence hinges entirely on the perpetuation of poverty in the places where they expend, rather than spend, their lives. If "you can't keep it out of Lonely Planet", any beach village will eventually become prosperous, runs the logic, and middle-class hoboes unable to afford to live there in idleness; so, at all costs, keep it out of Lonely Planet you must.
Garland has here investigated, acidly, what such people would do if they thought they had found Paradise. His conclusion is that they would kill to avoid sharing it, and would not notice if they turned it into Hell in the process. Thus, we meet what purports to be a like- and broad-minded community, which is in fact riven with cliquishness, mistrust, and murderous dislike, tensions held in abeyance as long as copious amounts of free marijuana are available to be stolen from the plantation on the island. Even before the gruesomely-related mass diarrhoea attack, you can smell these people.
I was notably impressed by the nerve Garland displays as he slaughters these characters. The only change in himself that his lead character notices, as he becomes homicidally demented, is that his suntan his improved. For this crowd, that's what life is about: travel, see the world, meet people...and get stoned and suntanned. You wouldn't find any of Garland's completely authentic backpackers hanging out anywhere that was actually, you know, cold.
The best thing is, none of Garland's targets will even realise what he's doing to them...
Book Review: Outstanding!
Summary: 5 Stars
What can I say? The best book I have read in ages! The places, characters and atmosphere are all described in amazing detail and all are truly believable. Absolutely amazing!Book Review: How can anyone like this book? Please tell me.
Summary: 1 Stars
This book made me very upset. I looked forward to reading it, but I found it terribly dull and static. Just a group of people spending months doing nothing in a remote beach in the Gulf of Thailand. Is that interesting or fascinating? I waited and waited for something interesting to happen, but nothing changed.