Confidently exploring every traveller's remote island and secluded beach fantasy, Alex Garland tantalises the consequences of life on the paradise on earth, conveniently being 'the Beach'. The author's utopian debut novel illustrates (using notably clear prose) a traditional tale of generation resentment and confusion appearing influenced by film, in its theme, its narrative style and the fixation of the main characters, especially the protagonist.
Bangkok's backpackers' quarter, the Khao San Road, is where the novel begins in 'a decompression chamber for those about to leave or enter Thailand, a halfway house between East and West' (p. ).
At a guesthouse on the outskirts of Bangkok, a disturbed, suicidal Vietnam veteran, called Daffy Duck (more Warner Bros. characters to follow!) gives a young, British traveller named Richard a map to paradise, a secret beach on an inaccessible island near Ko Samui, isolated, unspoiled and 'not-yet-featuring' in the latest Lonely Planet Guide...
Richard & Friend
the gang + Richard Dawkins
Daffy Duck, as he appears in The Looney Tunes Show...That very night, Duffy Duck cuts his wrists destined to play with Richard's imagination. Accompanied by Etienne and FranÃÂçoise, a young French couple who are fellow travellers (and guesthouse residents); Richard sets out on an udventure to find the beach.
From the very beginning of The Beach, the reader is faced with a book about filmic archetypes or clichÃÂés and wild imagination, that is made clear in the single page of text in italics with which the book opens. It is hallucinating and intoxicated, a climaxing of voices, beginning with a Vietnamese(?) prostitute ('All day, all night, me love you long time'), switching to a scene of paranoid combat ('this is Alpha patrol and we are taking fire'), and with an interesting identification of stereotypical Vietnam movie moments: 'Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of...