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    The Beach
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    The Beach
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    The Beach
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Beach

    Written by Alex Garland

    Narrated by Michael Page

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The Khao San Road, Bangkok - first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."

    The Beach, as Richard comes to learn, is a subject of legend among the young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for thousands of years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled into a communal Eden.

    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 as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly undercurrents.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 21, 2009
    ISBN9781423391449
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Beach

    4/5

    83 ratings63 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I wanted to read it all in one sitting but I made myself space it out.
    • 3/5
      I read this in my period of reading books that were being adapted to the screen. Almost without exception the books were disappointing and "The Beach" was not an exception.A young bloke travels to Thailand, meets up with French couple, gets map to uncharted Thai beach, gets there and shenanigans ensue. However, the shenanigans weren't as interesting as I thought they would be, considering the huge buzz about the book and resulting movie (which was also a bit meh).
    • 4/5
      Really awesome story. I can't believe this was his first book -- written in his 20's. So well written, and interesting thoughts. I wanna see what else he's done. Ending was lame but the book is worthwhile. Movie sucked, and I'm pissed. Probably why Garland went into screenwriting and directing later in his career, because they completely ruined his story. Poor broad.
    • 4/5
      The quick and dirty plot: Richard is a young and adventurous English traveler hellbent on moving around the fringes of the world with a brazen attitude. He boasts of exploring where others fear to tread. However, on his first night in Bangkok Richard's whole world changes after he thinks he has seen everything. His meeting with Daffy, also known as Mr. Duck, is a fateful turning point for all involved. Daffy, a Scottish traveler, ends up committing suicide but not before he leaves Richard a map of a beach he called paradise. Intrigued and unable to ignore the siren call of adventure, Richard recruits a French couple to join him and find this hidden oasis. Compared to Golding's Lord of the Flies and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Garland takes us to the beach where a group of other tourists have created a commune, complete with an off-center leader and other misfits.
    • 5/5
      Richard is a great character. He is not some abstraction in a moral tale. He's what most people are beneath the politeness and social roles: self-motivated and a little crazy. The book is a great take on humanity, its beauty, the absence of. This book is a glimpse of utopia and all that threatens it.
    • 4/5
      I cherish this novel as it brings back my Thailand days (I spent four years there), and the scenes in Bangkok are especially haunting in their accuracy. The end of the book reads a bit like _Lord of the Flies_.
    • 3/5
      Let me start by saying I had wanted to read this book for a long time and finally after many years got around to it. I also have never seen the movie but knowing who the star coupled with how bad most books to movies are I can only Imagine what a waste of two hours it would be. Unfortunately the book took more than two hours to finish. This book took far longer for me to get through than most 400+ page books normally do. I am not sure how this book managed to get the rave reviews it did, maybe there had never been anything like it before, but with the blatant rip offs of every Vietnam Nam movie, I don't see how.Quick review- backpackers meet in Bangkok hotel, whacked out fellow backpacker gives one of them a map to Eden before killing himself, ghost of dead backpacker appears far too frequently throughout rest of the book, group of three backpackers manage to get to Eden, grow bored with Eden, nearly die in Eden, escape from Eden. All of the backpackers/ village idiots on the island/beach, in the book are 20 something, naive, narcissistic, products of the 80's and 90's having few if any redeemable qualities.There was so much boring detail included in this book, while at the same time all of the implausible situations are ignored. No secret island would remain secret with the world traveler backpack set for more than 5 minutes. How did they manage to get enough rice carried to the tiny boat without anyone seeing them, and have enough for multiple months. How is it that a Papaya orchard went undiscovered for so long? How could a pool below the waterfall which was very high be deep enough? Since when do Thai Pot growers let people steal from them and laugh about it?It was as if the author grew up watching Gilligan's Island, which each week had something new to be discovered or have happen, believable or not.The last 30 or so pages are Apocalypse Now combined with such ludicrously outlandish behavior, that I almost quit reading the book.This book could have been and should have been so much better.
    • 4/5
      I picked up this book after realizing the author wrote the screenplay to 28 Days Later, one of my favorite films. Once I got started on The Beach, I consumed it pretty fast. It's written in a very casual first-person voice and the chapters are very short, so it's a fairly easy read. There's also a fair amount of dark stuff that happens, which kept me absorbed and anxious to keep reading.

      It's not a perfect novel. Once the main characters get to the eponymous beach, there are long passages of not much actually happening. It's mostly just conversations with other characters. That's great for getting to know them, but I felt like there was potential for more action, particularly with the tropical setting. I could sense something crazy would happen, and that held me, but the novel took a while to get there.

      Still, the payoff is pretty exciting (and really dark), so The Beach is definitely worth reading to the end. Looking forward to reading and watching more of Garland's work in the future!
    • 5/5
      I found the book to be so much better than the movie, as is usually the case.
    • 5/5
      Richard is a great character. He is not some abstraction in a moral tale. He's what most people are beneath the politeness and social roles: self-motivated and a little crazy. The book is a great take on humanity, its beauty, the absence of. This book is a glimpse of utopia and all that threatens it.
    • 2/5
      This book is about a despised lifestyle of entitled youths who are so entitled that they can go ruin paradise in Asia with their runaway numbers. An English boy in Thailand finds out about"the beach," a "paradise" on a remote island in the gulf of Thailand, prohibited to visitors. Well, that's the kind of prohibition that he's bound to break, so he sets off with a French boy and girl, determined to make paradise their own. Amazingly enough, despite huge obstacles, they do make their way there, and join a small community of other entitled boys and girls playing at hippie commune. Because humans are, well, human, paradise can't last for long, plus, this place never belonged to them, right?
      This is somewhat entertaining, but the entitlement, the animal cruelty, and the racism were hard to take. I won't be reading anymore from this author.
    • 3/5
      This is a story of travelers, and a slowly unraveling mystery. I wanted to like it more, but the ending was not very satisfying for me, and I feel like it was too long, and it tried to be too real and plausible to make it intriguing and exciting. If it were shorter it might have done the job better, I kept putting the book down because it built up intrigue and then let me down, or didn't get to the point. I don't want to give away the specifics in case the book still interests you, but it does feel like it wants to be a movie, but the writing isn't that great in the end.
    • 5/5
      Loved the movie, book might even be better, loved it!
    • 5/5
      Absolutely bloody cracking !!! You will not read a better book.
    • 3/5
      It's a conventional spin off of Lord of the Flies. I can't really say that I got this book. I like reading books about group dyanmics where things spin wildly out of control, but only if people act in ways that still seem reasonable to themselves. The way many people act in The Beach and the situations they bring about seem to be the act of lunatics with no real cause for lunacy.
    • 4/5
      A surreal tale of seeking the Beach, a legend amongst young western travellers, a place reputedly unspoiled by the popularity which has led to other Thai resorts becoming crowded, commercialised and "spoilt". Drugs, madness and Vietnam all find their way into this intriguing and unusual tale which ends in tragedy.
    • 3/5
      This is book #1 for my summer reading. It was a good book to kick off my summer. Mr. Garland has successfully created an atmosphere of the secret beach and the hippie community. I felt the heat and the saltiness of the air. The ending also has a good twist, totally unexpected (I haven't watched the film!).

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A cross-over between Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness set on a drug island in Thailand, with a bunch of backpackers trying to create heaven on the beach, but ending in ruins and horror. Must be an absolute number one bestseller among backpackers. Written very much from a perspective that is very familiar for people my age – the songs (REM), the Vietnam war imagery (from Tour of Duty) and the kind of fun (first Gameboy; soccer on the beach) we had in the 1990s, backpacking through Asia. (SPOILERS AHEAD!!) In short the story is about a British guy, Richard, who shortly after arriving in Bangkok has an exchange with a guy smoking pot, found dead in the morning, leaving a map with an island crossed-out. Jointly with a French couple, he sets off travelling to the island, neatly escaping some Thai drug lords, growing cannabis on the island, with a jump from a steep cliff as the only way out, landing them in a secluded beach community or the Thai version of paradise on earth, led by Sal, a woman who seems to lead against her own will. All goes well. Everyone forgets about ‘the world’ out there, all perform a chorus (gardening, or fishing, or cooking, or carpentry) and besides the occasional rice run with a hidden long boat there is no contact with the outside. But slowly Richard’s consciousness corrodes. He has made a mistake – leaving a copy of the map with some pot-smoking American friends. And that proves their undoing… Besides two classical incidents that split the community in two. The three Swedes get unfortunate, with a shark attack killing one outright, fatally hurting another and turning the final one mad. A second incident concerns an incidentally caused case of mass food poisoning, which causes subliminal tensions to break to the surface. Meanwhile Richard is haunted by the dead man (Duck) and the two Americans and three Germans who are brooding on ways to get to the island from the neighbouring island. Together with Jed, Richard has to protect the community from discovery (and doing the occasional dope run). Sal is trying to ‘manage’ all threats by using Richard, covering up for him and blackmailing him into another desperate action to keep the place from being discovered. Richard sees the five outsiders approach and does nothing when they get caught by the Thai kill squad, who actually slaughter the unwanted newcomers. When next Sal nudges him into solving the problem of the mad Swede, Rich has reached the bottom of his own corruption. He no longer wants to participate in Sal’s mad schemes to keep the utopia afloat and tries to orchestrate the escape of all he cares about – Francoise and Etienne, Jed and the game boy. They mastermind a collective blackout by stuffing the food with dope. Jed however, wakes with the second (dying) Swede in a tent and does not want to come unless the Swede is dead. Richard lends a hand at the night, by strangling the Swede. When all seems ready, the party indeed degenerating into one collective drunken, stoned trip, the group gets surrounded by Thai guards with AK47’s. The captain shows the map that guided the American-German party – Richard thinks they will all die now. But no, they are spared except for Richard himself who gets beaten up and next carved up by his own, when the crowd discovers the mutilated bodies of the American-German party and spins into collective madness by cutting limbs of the corpses and taking out the intestines. They direct their collective anger at Richard, the drawer of the map. They start stabbing him, but then Jed rises to the occasion – protects his friend and the five escape on the raft that brought the unfortunate newcomers. Everyone gets home, end of story. Duck made one final appearance, exclaiming ‘the horror, the horror’, in a clear reference to Dr Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. Well written, pacy, with Richard in the first person, and short scenes written in movie-type descriptions. Deserves to be a modern day classic in the backpackers scene.
    • 4/5
      Like many, I read the book after watching the movie starring Leonardo di Caprio. The book is quite a different tale, yet I didn't realise that until near the end. Perhaps if I hadn't seen the film I would have responded to this book differently but I was able to visualise the scenery from the film, whether or not this was Alex Garland's vision. (He had nothing to do with the movie production.)To continue with a comparison between the two versions, the protagonist of the novel is very English - and to me, this is an important part of his character - whereas di Caprio, of course, is American. Richard's descent into madness/paranoia is expertly captured in the book in a way which probably can't be done on film and is, after all, why we bother reading books at all. Much of the conflict is internal. Daffy Duck, the crazy Scottish dude who left Richard a map and promptly killed himself, follows Richard in his dreams. We can see at the beginning that Richard is a decent guy - he is concerned about the maid at the hostel who may electrocute herself. This contrasts sharply with several scenes later, when human life has assumed a completely different weight. I felt the author might have gotten sick of the book because it finished abruptly. Then again, Richard got sick of the island very quickly, and the ending of the novel may simply be a reflection of his rapid departure. Still, I felt the last chapter was tacked on, especially the bit where we're told he's only going to bother writing a short summary, calling it an epilogue. I very much got the impression the better writing came at the beginning of the book. There were a few clumsy sentences and lazy descriptions towards the end.Overall, this is a page turner. Each section is short and ends at a point that made me want to read on. Perhaps Richard's lack of compassion felt a little unbelievable to me; not just Richard's lack of empathy, but the general lackadaisical attitude of everyone on the beach towards human life. This feeling infiltrated throughout the community. I didn't buy that 30 people relying upon each other for their own survival would behave so callously towards each other. But perhaps Garland's imagining is the correct one.Did anyone else notice the coincidence of September 11 in this pre-2001 novel? The date is significant to Sal for a completely different reason. I wonder if Garland had a premonition!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Paradise lost?“Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.” It has been several years since I last watched the movie version of this book so felt that enough time had passed for me to tackle the original and I wasn't disappointed.The story at first seems like a simple adventure tale, a young British backpacker Richard heads off to Thailand where his path crosses a fellow traveller in a flop house called Daffy Duck who promptly kills himself by slitting his own wrists leaving Richard a map of the 'beach'. The beach is a legend among backpackers, a paradise where a select group live an easy tranquil life separated from normal society. Richard, along with a French couple, decides to try and find this paradise. Once there he finds the depiction of the place as he expected and more but that life is not as tranquil as he believed. There are all the trappings of normal society, work, hierarchy, an inner circle and outsiders all mixed in with a large amount of drug use. However, there is also a realization that no place can totally cut itself off from the outside world and its influences.Initially we are sucked into the beauty of the location and in many respects the book reads like a travelogue with beautifully descriptive sections but all the time there is an undercurrent of brutality circling like a shark just under the surface. Each chapter is short, usually 4 or 5 pages long with finely clipped prose like little vignettes making you want to read another one all the time slowly reeling you in. Then as you realise that Richard is slowly losing his mind the cracks around the edges of this 'paradise' become more and more evident until you know that one or the other must finally collapse.I must admit that the idea of living in some kind of commune, cutting myself off from the rest of humanity, has never appealed to me so in this respect I found it a little difficult to empathize with any of the characters. This was to certain extent is enhanced by the lack of surnames,only christian names or nationalities are all that's given,thus giving the impression that the characters were little more than outline figures with little material depth but then perhaps this was the author's intention.Overall I found this a very enjoyable read and can see why people believe that it will become a type of cult classic.However, it is had not to draw comparisons with William Golding's Lord of the Flies and for me that was done better. Still a valiant first effort.
    • 4/5
      Well, I found the travelling and the people, and the thoughts and feelings one goes through while in a strange land and not really having a clue as to what is going on very authentic - Garland captured, for me, what it was like in India, very well. And then we hit the ethic of the group, and realise these things can work, if everyone is willing to do their part and get along.
      The problem is, usually the people most vocal in their creation of such a utopia are the fucked up ones, who will turn out to be arch-hypocrites, and screw the whole thing up for everyone else. This, again, totally rang true. Anyone who has spent any time on the hippy trail, or hanging out with reactionaries, revolutionaries, hippies , free-thinkers, etc., will have found a few people who could really carry this off. The problem is, they are not interested in the petty power of control, and such groups are soon dominated by the liars, who believe their own bullshit, but actually, are so self-centred they have absolutely no idea how self-centred they actually are.
      As a morality tale, The Beach shows just how many people actually are in this group, only really on the fringes, because no one else will have them. As such, it is a great reflection of the kind of people you meet. It goes a bit bonkers for the ending, but in a very Lord of the Flies way, takes such conclusions about people to an extreme.
      I gave this 3 stars before i wrote the review, but going back over what i learnt from it (i read it about 13 years ago), I realise its power and accuracy. I have not seen the film, and from the reaction of 'real' travellers i know, am glad. I will keep the book with all its flaws, because it says a lot about human beings. If you have ever travelled, read it. If you haven't, yes, travel in the far East is really that mental ;-)

      As an aside, i once hitched a lift with one of Garland's mates, soon after The Beach went global. He said that most of the characters were based on real people they had both met out in Thailand and the Far East. I can well believe it.
    • 2/5

      I've put off writing anything about this hoping that I'd be able to drag my weary disinterest through to the end of the novel...unfortunately that never occurred. Maybe it's because of having done the itinerant traveller thing, or maybe it was because the book felt too contrived, or maybe....I expected something else or something more. Whatever. This just didn't do it for me.

      If you haven't backpacked through Asia, I guess this book could be an interesting read...and if you had, it might be chock-a-block full of reminisces for you and be worth a trip down memory lane. I think the been-there-done-that syndrome just had me shaking my head at implied-but-insubstantive pseudo insights and the gratuitous self-righteousness of the narrator. All in all, not quite a disappointment but nothing to really write home about. As a tourist, traveller, exile or expat.
    • 5/5
      I found the book to be so much better than the movie, as is usually the case.
    • 4/5
      When I read Golding's 'Lord of the Flies', I was intrigued by the theme of children's survival on a desert island. Here, I find that this novel goes beyond Golding's masterpiece, as it is fit for a more modern, socially disconnected YA readership (or adult readership too), like a Melvin Burgess novel. The theme is the same, the first-person narrator makes for a deeper reading, the pace is sustained and chapters are short. For a first novel, it is actually pretty good, and, while I haven't read more books by Garland, I'll keep an eye out for his other novels.
    • 5/5
      Captivating page burner. At the end of the day, it's an ex-pat slacker Lord of the Flies. I don't know that it offers much profound, but it's thoroughly engrossing, impossible to put down and I loved the narrator's voice. Have to give credit, as well, to the fact that real relationships were developed without gimmick or artifice, within the context of the story, I didn't feel as if any element was contrived. Perhaps better: Fight Club meets Lord of the Flies. I'll read another by Garland.
    • 3/5
      Not a bad read. It was reminiscent of Lord Of The Flies only with adults instead of children. Overall, a pretty cynical view of human nature and the inability to live in an Edenic ambiance.
    • 3/5
      A book from the early 90s, it was made into a Leonardo DiCaprio movie about a young man who is backpacking in Asia and finds out about a beach on a remote island in Thailand where a group of people have been living in a commune for several years. It's unspoiled and idyllic and the next thing to paradise. Or is it? It ends up being hard work and kind of scary at times. It's not so idyllic that there aren't rules and everyone must obey them. The island also contains a cannabis farm and the gun toting guards can be nasty if crossed, too. It almost reminds you of a grown up Lord of the Flies at times.
    • 5/5
      Very will written, interesting story a real page turner!
    • 4/5
      A surreal tale of seeking the Beach, a legend amongst young western travellers, a place reputedly unspoiled by the popularity which has led to other Thai resorts becoming crowded, commercialised and "spoilt". Drugs, madness and Vietnam all find their way into this intriguing and unusual tale which ends in tragedy.
    • 4/5
      Decent page turner - pretty good for a debut novel.