Title: The Beach Pdf
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 by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on 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.
Vastly Superior to Film Adaptation With Alex Garland gaining popularity in cinema (Ex Machina, Annihilation, etc.) I was curious to check out some of his earlier writing. It had been some time since I had seen the film adaption by Danny Boyle, which was probably a good thing. The movie is OK, but the novel is fantastic.There are two things that jump out at me with the novel (beyond specific events and plot points); 1. The examination of Traveler vs Tourist, and 2. They dynamics of leadership and social order. The first really sets up the story by breaking down any preconceived ideologies these characters may have. The traveler is fiercely independent, if not mildly pretentious. They carry no sense of nationalism or social bonds. But they are also in denial. About their dependency on many things they ridicule and fact they are still just tourists.Which leads to the second theme...how do a group of "travelers" redefine a social hierarchy and leadership model in an isolated environment. Who fishes? Who farms? Who builds shelter? Who LEADS? More importantly what happens when those structures start to break down? Hunger, sickness, tribal warfare.....chaos is lurking...even in Paradise.Hard to put down So I did quite a bit of traveling, sleeping on beaches, hostels, worked on Kibbutz, all over the world in my 20s and this book gives you that same rush. Makes you long to meet unusual people, grow intensely close for short spurts of time while you share rare and sometimes dangerous experiences. Characters here were so fleshed out as were the locations. Insights into how people think in unexpected situations were extremely believable. Didn't want to let go of some of the characters at the end and wished there was a sequel. But just like traveling you have to say goodbye with that pang of yearning and later think back to all the people you met with wonder. Plus, reading this I got to experience extreme traveling without having to literally endure some of the gore these travelers encounter. But I won't give it away. Have a great trip!
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