Forgot to review this one at the time silly me. One you definitely have to stick with and the final parts are some of the best. The descent into madness is very well played out. Was definitely enjoyable, a world that was easy to imagine. 1 criticism is whoever let the film be made needs to be shot. The book is far better and the changes for the film were not very good. Over than the weird video game bit thay was class.

”Tell me why you’re here!”
“The horror,” he said.

Paranoia in paradise.

Perspective meets perception.

Eden has rules.

Can we trust ourselves?

Having never heard of Alex Garland I picked up his debut novel, "The Beach" because the cover and premise were intriguing. I'm happy to say that Mr. Garland delivered exactly what he promised and I breezed through this little yellow book in two days. If Jack Kerouac wore shorts and hung out with William Golding, the two might have produced something like this.

The Beach is compulsively readable because of several factors. First, the chapters are structured and trimmed into an expert lenght, often forming four or five page vignettes which allow for the good old "just one more" syndrome which kept many a reader turning the pages deep into the night. The second factor is the story, which is a grand adventure and never really lets up. I was never bored while reading The Beach, and constantly wanted to know what will happen next, and the book kept my excitement up to the very last sentence. Time flies, both for the readers and the characters, and after the experience both won't be the same.

The plot is simple: Richard, a twentysomething backpacker finds his way to Bangkok, where he checks into a cheap hostel on Khao San Road. There he meets a seemingly crazy neighbour who introduces himself as Daffy. Daffy speaks crazy talk about a remote island , located in a off-limits part of Thailand, forbidden for tourists. On this island is a beach, and Daffy describes is as a perfect utopia; Richard decides to go there along with the French couple he met at the hostel, and using a map drawn by Daffy sets out to find the legendary beach.

Now, this sounds like fun, and is exactly that - fun. The suspense is unbearable, and the adventure aspect of the novel is something rarely encountered in contemporary fiction. Seduced with the promise of a perfect hideout, the reader sets on along with Richard on a riveting and spectacular adventure. Everything about this book is well done, and it transports the reader into a dream of most Western travelers - a perfect island, unspoiled by commercial culture and an ideal place for idealistic people to set up. To shape their lives upon. What will Richard's arrival change? Will he adapt? Or will he not?

This is an exciting debut novel, dark and sinister, but also funny and laced with exciting cultural references. A fast and furious novel that transports the reader into another place, much like Golding's Lord of the Flies. The Golding comparison is unavoidable, but The Beach stands alone; Garland's writing is razor sharp and colloquial without being cliched, and guarantees for an intelligent page-turner. This is a definite keeper.

I really don't care to read a book where every other page the main character smokes a joint and talks about how attractive a French girl is. Boring I say. Moving on.

Happy St. Patrick's day all :).

It seems rather fitting that I would finish The Beach by Alex Garland today, as this book is a bit of a mind fuck, and the day of the Irish tends towards the same. The similarity, naturally, ends there.

The Beach is Golding's Lord of the Flies for a twenty-or-thirty-something audience. And whilst I know I may get flayed for this, I have to say, I liked it quite a bit better.

I know that Golding did it first so when I feel the pull between my favourite character in his work and a similar character within The Beach I do know which is the artifice, however, Garland's character development was both better and more interesting. There was so much more development overall here.

Also, it's worth noting I was a stubborn, stubborn little shit of a teenager, so when my English teacher told me that I would LOVE Lord of the Flies she probably actualized the opposite. And however much I've tried I can't get over it!

Okay enough of that! This was a wonderful first book and although I had a gripe or two about language or metaphors early on I found myself lost in Garland's story quite quickly. I wouldn't say that Garland is a literary genius but his story is wonderful! Simply wonderful! All the dark social commentary and hidden barbarian nature play is good stuff, it really is.

If you enjoyed Lord of the Flies I highly recommend The Beach by Alex Garland! Although it varies story wise I think it's overall impact is similar in many respects.

Go drink some green beer or something. This has been another random musing :P.

Great, bizarry, chilling story, keeps you turning the pages til the end. In the top of my booklist definitely.

Note 2018 after this book came up again in my goodreads library: another 'classic' which I really found intriguing back then. Need to reread definitely.

maybe the one true gen-x classic.

i’ve read this a few times since it first came out and it’s still infinitely better than the dicaprio movie, which isn’t anywhere near awful to begin with. little masterpiece.

like hemingway meets lord of the flies meets chuck p.

a book that stays in your noggin.

Given time, Shangri-La never is.
You must grow up and live in the real world, complicated and unpleasant as it may be. Seems to me this is something every generation has to figure out for itself, with assistance or hindrance from various psychoactive substances.

Richard, age 21, goes to Thailand and finds his way to a hidden settlement on a secluded island that is supposed to be off-limits to tourists. The people there are enjoying an Edenic existence, getting nearly everything they need from the land, including unlimited doobies for all. Circumstances arise that divide the group, and the copious THC rations only provide fuel for the paranoid delusions and poor judgment. Eventually it all dissolves in a rather grisly fashion.
It was disturbing to me that Richard saw the whole thing almost as a game, even after all the horror. He considered the experience his compensation for not having been born in time to be a Vietnam veteran.

3.5 stars, but I can be generous and round up to 4 because the youthful author showed a convincing grasp of group dynamics and self-interested behavior. The rivalries, jealousies, and power struggles felt very true to real life.

I should add that if you are squeamish, you might want to avoid this book. The author didn't go overboard with the gross-out detail, but there are some pretty graphic scenes I could have done without.

This book is of course way better than the movie.
The movie was watered down, warped, and completely missed the point Garland tried to make in his astonishingly succesful first novel.
For starters, Richard, the main character, is brown, English, and doesnt have sex with anybody. He's not Leo at all.
The first half of the book is incredible and really gets deep into the backpacking culture in Thailand, and is the best example of backpacker literature for our generation that I've yet seen.
Still, after he builds this momentum and gets across what he wanted about backpacking, he never really found a good way to end it.
Fitting really, because most vacations are abortive like that, and The Beach delves into how some people desperately dont want them to end.

I really wish the copy I read didn't have shirtless Leonardo DiCaprio on it.

Started & finished this within 5 days.

Fantastic, i LOVED it.

Much darker than the film.

I will defend this book's subtle intelligence to the ends of the Earth. Garland's performative act--seducing us with the myth of perfect travel, deftly balancing the naive hypocrisies of Westerners rooting out the exotic in the East--creates a brutal ending that recasts what had led up to it. While Garland could have easily stopped with a cautionary tale, he went further by lacing his character's thoughts not with literary allusions, but filmic ones. Which 20-something British kid wouldn't think of "Apocalypse Now" while foraging through the jungle in Thailand?

Also, this title's in my Desert Island picks because it doubles as a survival guide. Did you know you can clean your teeth with twigs?