 | jmgalvez (0)
03/28/2001 |  Alex Garland wrote the perfect Generation X book with "The Beach". I have been a literature-aholic for the past 25 years (and I'm only 33), and I rate his book in the top 30 books I've ever read. His book should wipe out the dated classic, "The Great Gatsby", and be studied in high school. Garland has as strong of a narrative voice as Charles Dickens in "David Copperfield", and I would venture to say that he is a better editor of his own work than Dickens. "The Beach"'s pace was excellent, the characters were richly developed, the metaphors were clever, the story was original (stop mentioning "Lord of the Flies"!), the dialog was clear, ...
Ironically, though, after finishing this book last night, I scanned my TV and found "The Beach" playing on HBO. Juacala! It was awful! The actual beach was exactly as described in the book and the visual representation of Bankok was better than Garland's description: there, unfortunately, my praise ends. The dialog and story line were severely dummied-down for teenage Leonardo di Caprio fans. The entire movie lacked finesse.
I hope Garland uses better judgement in relinquishing control over future screenplays. I look forward to reading "Tesseract".
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 | twil9001om (0)
07/24/2000 | Garland succeeds in crafting page turners of the finest degree. He also touches a nerve with young men who feel there is an inherent crisis facing their gender. The Beach raises excellent questions regarding the free roaming spirit and what it means to belong. However, it just turns into a shocking and sensationalistic rip-off of Lord Of The Flies. The actual notion of The Beach being the tranquil and iydillic paradise that we all seek - that all of us ostensibly seek some form of oblivion - is an important idea. It also serves as a hilarious parody upon self-righteous back-packers and gap-year bores - "No, maaan. You've gotta see the real Thailand.". I'll show you a real fist if you don't pipe down.
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 | magellan (174)
07/22/2000 | I have not read a writer who does a better job of capturing the conflicting emotions of the traveler better than Garland. His ability to synthesize complex feelings while building intricate storylines is impressive - especially from such a young writer. I agree with the reviewer below - with a couple more efforts of the quality of The Beach and The Tesseract, Garland will undoubtedly be considered as one of the better contemporary authors.
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 | Munson (8)
07/21/2000 | The Beach and The Tesseract were both interesting, well written novels. Garland's narrative style flows incredibly well, his characters are always complicated and interesting, and his desriptions are vivid and beautiful. Once he expands his resume to include a few more books like these, I would have no problem bumping this rating to a 5.
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