Thailand Fiction
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The Beach
By Alex Garland
Riverhead Books, 1999
$19.00
This debut novel by Alex Garland tells the story of Richard,
a young travelling Brit, who happens upon a map to paradise.
Looking to escape the tourist trap, he and a French couple decide
to find "the Beach" on a secluded island near Thailand. When
they finally reach the island, however, they find it is far
from the idyllic world they had imagined.
Reviews of The Beach
"The Beach is impressive in its group portrait of a new generation
of young vagabonds. Raised in an era of diminished confidence,
they have set out in search of something that feels genuine
and fulfilling. What they find turns out to be not utopia but
hell." -- The New York Times Book Review
"Garland's provocative style - somewhere between Joseph Conrad,
Bret Easton Ellis, and Stephan King - creates a modern day Eden
where Nintendo Game Boy, Apocalypse Now, and a drug-trafficking
Thai militia blend seamlessly into the landscape." -- Vogue
"Garland has written what may be the first novel about the search
for genuine experience among members of the so-called X Generation
- twenty somethings weaned on video games, MTV, and decades'
worth of pop detritus - and that's not snide or reflexively
cynical...The Beach combines an unlikely group of influences
- Heart of Darkness, Vietnam war movies, Lord of the Flies,
the Super Mario Brothers video game - into...ambitious, propulsive
fiction." -- The Washington Post
Buy The Book! The Beach
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