The Beach Book

Across Old Blighty summer's radiance is fading, the skies are turning grey, a cruel wind rustles the tree tops and for the first time in many a month I have experienced uncontrollable shivers and teeth chatters. Wearing my woollen hat and with a cup of tea in hand I sit in my bedroom dreaming of sunnier climes and rueing my Dad's defiance not to turn on the central heating, "until at least November!". My body is in the West Midlands - that beautiful patch of grey where summer is but a distant rumour - but must my mind remain here in this industrial wasteland? The answer is nay, nay, thrice times nay! Why you may very well ask is the answer thus? A good book is the reason dear friends! Yes, fear not, good literature is at hand! Now spin that temperature dial, bask in the warm glow of your radiator and pick up a copy of Alex Garland's The Beach!

Now I have got all that creative writing and several exclamation marks out of my system let us move on to the review...My first experience of The Beach came on a plane journey. I watched the Leonardo Dicaprio movie based on the book on one of those tiny in flight screens not much bigger than a postage stamp and covered in a thousand passenger's greasy smudges. Despite my restricted view and a crackly headphone I really loved the film and later on my travels when I came across the novel of the same name at a book exchange in a hostel I was staying at, I gladly swapped it for one of my own books. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I made on the entire trip...

The Beach tells the story of a young English backpacker called Richard, who whilst staying at a hell hole of a hostel in Bangkok gains possession of a treasure map of sorts from a crazy Scotsman who subsequently commits suicide. The treasure map does not indicate the location of buried chests of gold but instead provides the holder with directions to an ideological treasure - paradise on Earth. This 'paradise' is - you guessed it - a beach! But naturally it is not any old stretch of sand. Instead it is a hidden, secret beach, on a small island unspoilt by tourists. With two French backpackers in tow, Richard travels across Thailand to 'the beach'. What they discover is indeed a natural, tropical paradise, but they are shocked to find a small community of backpackers already living there. The self-sufficient community is a surreal and eclectic group of multinationals, many having lived there for years with no contact from the outside world. The group are sun bleached and seemingly blissfully contented, but something dangerous is bubbling under the surface of paradise. Richard integrates into the community well and for a while life is heavenly. His time is split between fishing in the beautiful crystal clear waters of the lagoon, playing Gameboy and fooling around in the sunshine. But soon enough the pressure cooker environment of the closed community shows signs of tension and paradise quickly deteriorates into hell...This of course is a very loose overview of the plot (I don't want to spoil all the twists!). But rest assured the tale is exhilarating from start to finish - there's sex, murder, mental breakdown, hallucinations, sun, sea, sand and sharks!!!

Garland utilised his own experiences as a backpacker in the penning of his debut novel. Now, I've been backpacking myself but I can't claim to have experienced anything as wild as the story that unfolded in these pages. For that I am quite grateful! The story is as brutal as it is beautiful, the heavenly paradise of the tale's location contrasting sharply with the degradation and decay of the characters' humanity and the implosion of the society they created. In this regard many critics have compared the Beach to Golding's Lord of the Flies - a comparison that I wholeheartedly agree with. In Lord of the Flies we witnessed the worst of human nature played out through the actions of children. Marooned on a tropical island and without adult supervision, the children's initial attempts to create a semblance of stable society with the foundations of basic law and order soon crumbled and anarchy prevailed. After reading Lord of the Flies I considered whether such a scenario could happen in reality. Remembering my own childhood and the harsh realities of the playground I conceded that yes, without adult supervision it probably could. However, The Beach makes you question whether adult supervision would have made a difference, showing us even mature minds, born and raised in a fair society can be corrupted and spiral into oblivion.

Alex Garland is an excellent storyteller, responsible for the creation of several famous novels and Hollywood screenplays alike. To date two of his novels - The Beach and The Tesseract - have been adapted for the big screen. In addition to this Garland has created original screenplays, notably 28 Days Later and Sunshine which were directed by Danny Boyle (of Slum Dog Millionaire fame) who also took to the director's chair for the big screen treatment of Garland's The Beach. The Beach is Garland's finest work to date - a classic novel, combining action and adventure, love and romance, travel, psychology and sociology...oh, and a brutal shark attack...plus the white sands, palm trees and crystal clear waters promise to warm even the coldest of central heating deprived houses!? What more could you ask for as winter draws near?!