|
|
The Beach
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price:
$23.95
Asia Trips Trips Price:
$17.88
Your Savings: $ 6.07 ( 25% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover
|
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781573220484
ISBN: 1573220485
Label: Riverhead Hardcover
Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 371
Publication Date: 1997-02-10
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Studio: Riverhead Hardcover
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
A rootless young Westerner believes he has stumbled upon paradise on a remote island off Thailand, a place known as "The Beach," until he discovers the deadly underside of the island's culture. A first novel. 150,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: A good read...
Comment: for any one, any age who has done a tour in SE Asia. Or not done a tour and wants to.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ok, but not as good as I hoped.
Comment: I bought this to read while in Thailand. I was staying on the beach in Chawaeng, thinking this'd be a great read. The best I can say is that it's an ok holiday read. It seems to take itself a little too seriously - like it's trying to become great literature, but needs just a little more. The dramatic point comes a little too late and is too obvious in coming - so the tension doesn't build as it should. Also, it seems like there was a storyline that got dropped entirely - there was a whole bunch of foreshadowing, but nothing ever came of it. I guess this might have been the authors attempt at a "twist", but it came off feeling more like "oops, forgot that one" :(
Ah well - it's still worth reading once and provided an interesting fictional context to where I was staying. I never got out to the lagoon cos it was raining and high swell - yep, it exists and yep, you can go there on the tour.
Maybe next time will be better. ;)
Customer Rating:
Summary: This Beach is not too shallow and not too deep.
Comment: The Beach is an easy book to read that should leave any traveller nodding their head in recognition, dismay, or both.
While it doesn't explore the complexities of the modern, post-colonial relationship between "east" and "west" to a great extent, it does explore that relationship just enough to keep the book interesting.
It's not really a thriller; it's written in the fast-paced, easy-flowing style of a thriller and it contains a lot of violence, but the narrator's perspective is too focused on the mundane aspects of things for the book to really be called "thrilling."
Richard, the protagonist is not really that "shallow," "immoral," or a "slacker," as people have commented. But he is simple. He's a lonely person who travels and does drugs - two very primitive sources of stimulation, really - because more grounded, consistent ways of life don't seem to work for him. He's not a rebel nor does he have much angst. Like many travellers, he hides from himself by putting himself in unfamiliar surroundings.
Many travellers may complain about the protagonist's "narrow" view of the world, but they are missing the point. Richard reveals a truth about travel that many readers may be afraid to face: no matter how much we talk about "experiencing another culture," and "getting to understand the world," most of travel really consists of hanging out with people like ourselves, and what we ultimately like about travel, more than any kind of deep learning, is excitement and fun.
But, yes, Richard's level of consciousness is ultimately quite shallow (Perhaps Garland's is as well?), and sometimes I, too, found myself disappointed by that fact: sometimes, I wished that the book would offer more insights into the problematic relationship between backpackers and their destinations and the ultimate silliness of the Western desire to find "unspoiled," "natural" places, and I wished for more interesting sentences (I appreciate the simplicity and straight-forwardness of the narration, but there are many simple writers who still manage to create great sentences, and Garland is not one of them, nor do I think he wants to be.)
But I was grateful for the absence of something else from the book: pretentiousness. In recent years, and even moreso in the 1990s, "depth" consisted of vague pop culture references and poetic, ironic, self-congratulatory writing.
Garland's voice, on the other hand, is so modest as to be almost boring, and his pop culture references are done without any irony: he talks about video games merely because they are a big part of his life. He doesn't attempt to comment on the nature of pop culture, he just talks about it a lot. He doesn't say that pop culture has "shaped" our "postmodern" culture, or "replaced" anything "real"; really, video games are just one of the many things that influence his life.
The Beach, for its lack of pretentiousness in dealing with potentially "big" subjects (the relationship of east and west, pop culture, alienation), would almost merit five stars.
It is refreshing that The Beach doesn't seem to be trying to "add up to much," but it is nonetheless frustrating that it doesn't add up to much. When the narrator references Vietnam movies and draws superficial parallels between The Beach and the Vietnam war, the result is just that: superficial. Garland did not develop this motif enough for it to be interesting, nor did he keep it minimal enough for it to not get annoying.
The constant barrage of phrases along the lines of "This is Vietnam, boy!" are neither as silly nor as scary as they should be.
At times, it appears that The Beach will become either an action-packed adventure story or a profoundly developed reflection on the world, but it does not really deliver on either of those levels unless you ignore certain aspects of it or put too much energy into reading between the lines.
In the end, however, The Beach is a satisfying, commendable novel. It is an easy-to-read piece of pseudo-travel lit that, if it does not define a generation, certainly does, to a small extent, define a certain type of traveller that existed in that generation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Soul inspiring
Comment: Reading this book really made me think. As someone who has suffered from wanderlust my entire life this book hit home. Its a great adventure story but its also about self exploration and friendship. Great Book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: In this book, Anything that can happen... Will Happen.
Comment: The Beach is about a man named Richard, not Leonardo DiCaprio. Richard is someone who is looking for an interminable paradise. A vacation that never ends. A beach where society isn't waiting for you to get back. He, Etienne, and his girlfriend Franchoise are all in search of a place that isn't just another ordinary vacation. They want to be free, free of society's demands.
This books is our generation's Lord of the Flies. Where the children were exposed to their own evil capabilities, the small village that has developed on The Beach also falls prey to a similar Lord of the Flies. In this case, the evil comes out of what they believe to be self preservation. While the boys fought each other in LotFlies for power and control, the villagers begin to experience evil through their own selfish need of preservation. They never let go of The Beach, and this is what corrupts the very essence of The Beach.
Overall, this book began amazing. It ran about 50-100 pages too long,as the book seemed to lose massive amounts of steam towards the end. I made a friend, who hates books, read this book and he actually did in just a period of 2 days. It is that easy to be consumed by it. He too agreed it lingered on for too long and it lost its amazing feel to it.
I still love this book and will forever keep it close to me for re-reading pleasure. I hope that I am allowed to post an exerpt from the book within here because I find this simple chapter discussing the possibilities of Infinity to be one of the finest written pieces I have ever read. I truly love this chapter and I hope it reveals enough that you too will read this book and forget the failure of a movie.
-------------The Beach-----------------
"Do you want me to tell you something funny?"
"What about?"
"Infinity. But it isn't that complicated. I mean, you don't need a degree in-"
Francoise waved a hand in the air, tracing a red pattern with the tip of her cigarette.
"Is that a yes?" I whispered.
"Yes."
"Okay." I coughed quietly. "If you accept that the universe is infinite, then that means there's an infinite amount of chances for things to happen, right?"
She nodded and sucked on the red coal floating by her fingertips.
"Well, if there's an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen - no matter how small the likelihood."
"Ah."
"That means somewhere in space there's another planet that, by an incredible series of coincidences, developed exactly the same way as ours. Right down to the smallest detail."
"Is there?"
"Definitely. And there's another which is exactly the same, except that palm tree over there is two feet to the right. And there's another where the tree is two feet to the left. In fact, there're infinite planets with infinite variations on that tree alone..."
Silence. I wondered if she was asleep. "So how about that?" I prompted.
"Interesting," she whispered. "In these planets, everything that can happen will happen."
"Exactly."
"Then in one planet, maybe I am a movie star."
"There's no maybe about it. You live in Beverly Hills and swept last year's Oscars."
"That's good."
"Yeah, but don't forget, somewhere else your film was a flop."
"Oh?"
"It bombed. The critics turned on you, the studio lost a fortune, and you got into booze and Valium. It was pretty ugly."
Francoise rolled on to her side and looked at me. "Tell me about some other worlds," she whispered. In the moonlight her teeth flashed silver as she smiled.
"Well," I replied. "That's a lot to tell."
Etienne stirred and turned over again.
I leaned over and kissed Francoise. She pulled away, or laughed, or shook her head, or closed her eyes and kissed me back. Etienne woke, clasping his mouth in disbelief. Etienne slept. I slept while Francoise kissed Etienne.
Light-years above our garbage bag beds and the steady rush of the surf, all these things happened.
---------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
