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The Beach: A Novelby Alex Garland
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The Khao San Road, Bangkok — first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."
The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden. Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck — the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man — and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents. Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach is a look at a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand. Review:"At times, Garland seems to be trying to say something powerful about the perils of desiring a history-less Eden. But his evocations of Vietnam...and various other feints in the direction of thematic gravity don't add up to much. Garland is a good storyteller, though, and Richard's nicotine-fueled narrative...is taut with suspense." Publishers Weekly Review:"A mesmerizing first novel...that manages to be many things at once: a smart look at a generation way beyond mere disillusionment, an anti-travelogue to the most exotic of locales, a study in small-group psychology, and a convincing profile in madness. All this, and the dynamics of a fast-paced thriller....[A] riveting read." Kirkus Reviews Review:"[An] absorbing first novel....[Garland] has a clear, engaging storytelling style and a vivid imagination....[A] genuine page turner..." David Sacks, The New York Times Book Review Review:"[A] gripping first novel....Garland is a wonder; he's able to write unrelentingly suspenseful, downright hallucinatory action scenes, then balance them with passages of chillingly accurate psychology....The Beach has cult status scrawled all over it." Donna Seaman, Booklist Review:"The Beach is fresh, fast-paced, compulsive, and clever — a Lord of the Flies for Generation X." Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity Review:"[Alex Garland has] written a furiously intelligent first novel...a book that moves with the kind of speed and grace many older writers can only dream about....The Beach combines an unlikely group of influences — Heart of Darkness, Vietnam war movies, Lord of the Flies, the Super Mario Brothers video games — into...ambitious, propulsive fiction." The Washington Post Review:"[The Beach is] that real rarity: a subtle and complex novel that reads like a comet." Salon.com Review:"The Beach will astonish readers....Builds to a crackling finale, complete with interesting moral questions. But this is no mere thriller. Garland explores the roots of his generation's ennui....Not since reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History has this reader been so taken with a first novel." USA Today Review:"Generation X has its first great novel....A wonderful adventure and allegory that may be the best novel written by anyone currently younger than thirty." The Sunday Oregonian Synopsis:The award-winning national bestseller and cult hit that the Village Voice called "a truly awesome piece of work" and USA Today called "one great book." About the AuthorAlex Garland is the author of the bestselling generational classic The Beach and of The Tesseract, a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book. He also wrote the original screenplay of the critically acclaimed film 28 Days Later. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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