Detailed item info | Synopsis | A young man backpacking in Southeast Asia meets a French couple, and together they follow a dead man's map to "the beach," a fabled island unspoiled by the tourist trade. Haunted by increasingly violent dreams about the dead man, he finds that, once there, the idyllic paradise slowly begins to shatter, giving way to escalating horror and depravity. This novel, which follows in the tradition of LORD OF THE FLIES, was a huge success in England upon its publication, establishing Garland as an "author to watch."
| | Size | | Height: | 8.3 in. | | Width: | 5.3 in. | | Thickness: | 1.0 in. | | Weight: | 12.8 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | 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.
The award-winning bestseller and cult hit that "The Village Voice" called "a truly awesome piece of work". ""The Beach" is fresh, fast-paced, compulsive, and clever--a "Lord of the Flies" for Generation X".--Nick Hornby, author of "High Fidelity".
| | Industry reviews | "[A]rresting though no masterpiece....Garland's message is complex and acute. The self-indulgence of a generation of young Westerners--seeking isolated and well-funded paradises and ignoring the miseries and needs around them--can itself breed monsters. There is more than one kind of Vietnam....The reader's suspense in this intelligently conceived and often effective novel, may consist more in wondering what the author will do than in what his characters will do."
Los Angeles Times Book Review - Richard Eder (02/02/1997)
"Alex Garland, at 26, seems like a natural-born storyteller. He's written a furiously intelligent first novel about backpacker culture in Southeast Asia, a book that moves with the kind of speed and grace many older writers can only daydream about. Just as impressively, Garland has written what may be the first novel about the search for genuine experience among members of the so-called X Generation...that's not snide or reflexively cynical."
Washington Post Book World - Dwight Garner (02/09/1997)
"[I]mpressive in its group portrait of a new generation of young vagabonds."
New York Times Book Review - David Sacks (03/16/1997)
"This exceptional first novel by...Alex Garland creates a picture of an ideal society gone awry through the heady conjunction of a secret beach on an island in southeast Asia and a cultural breadth of reference determined by pop songs, the Vietnam War, and Nintendo Gameboys."
Times Literary Supplement - Giles Foden (10/18/1996)
"[A]n expertly crafted, sometimes gripping load of hooey."
Salon - Stephanie Zacharek (01/29/1999)
"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-pace thriller....Garland owes as much to Conrad and Golding as he does to Coppola, Stone, and Warner Brothers cartoons, and it's that wild mix that helps make for a riveting read."
McCabe
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