Alex Garland
1997
An
Alexandrine Couplet About The Beach
An English dude hangs out on a beach in
Thailand
He and friends spend months
there—avoiding real life
First, just watch the 1st
3/4s of the Leonardo DiCaprio movie. The beginning and middle are great, but
the end kills it.
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This . . .
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.
. . isn’t as good as this . . .
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.
. . AND AT ALL COSTS,
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. . . avoid this.
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The Beach
is about a British guy, Richard, who dodges life by traveling. One could say staying
on the move is his only real skill.
He’s in Bangkok, Thailand, on Ko Sanh
Road (I’m using Garland’s spelling since there’s more than one correct way to
spell Ko Sanh. Translating from Thai is difficult.), because he really wants to
get away from the reality and safety of British life.
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Bangkok: Where you go to get away from reality
and safety.
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His neighbor in a guestroom flophouse on
Ko Sanh keeps him awake one night muttering and talks to him over the wall. The
next day the neighbor slits his wrists. He leaves Richard a carefully drawn map
to a mysterious beach on a small island in the gulf of Thailand.
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It would have been much faster if Google
Maps and iPhones had been invented.
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Richard and a French couple he just met
(he really likes the guy, and falls immediately for the girl, of course) are of
the same mind: They’re tired of traveling to tourist spots and long for
something new, unblemished, untouched by guidebooks, something for “travelers”
instead of “tourists”. They decide to find The Beach.
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Because Ronald McDonald is also on Ko
Sanh,
and they’re sick of it.
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Long story short: The 3 follow the map
and find a few dozen people living in an isolated cove on one of the many
thousands of islands in the Bay of Thailand. It’s in a wildlife preserve area,
and the other side of the island is a gigantic pot plantation that bribes
anyone who would come looking, so The Beach is protected in multiple ways. The
people make a surprisingly adept village culture – they all have jobs (gardening,
carpentry, and fishing are the main ones), and they all live in the sand and
sun and love life. They smoke a lot of weed. They were all seasoned travelers
looking to escape from the world, and on The Beach, they did.
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Can’t say I blame them.
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The escapism is so pervasive that these
people virtually forget there’s a world beyond them. Their parents and friends
have no idea where they are, and they virtually never talk about their previous
lives except in the context of traveling. The Beach has been there for about 3
years.
But of course, drama ensues. Other
people find them using a copy of the map Richard drew. Some of their fishermen
are attacked by a shark. These are things the beach isn’t prepared to deal
with. The women in charge is willing to do whatever it takes to keep them safe
and together, and as she tries to enlist Richard’s help (assuming he’s
sociopathic enough to aide her) this all becomes a thriller.
The only parts that gives people
trouble, really, are the constant allusions to Vietnam movies. Richard
references Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal
Jackets, and others in his head throughout the novel. He uses military
lingo he learned from those films and has fantasies and hallucinations derived
from them. Richard wants excitement and danger, and he only knows about such
things from movies like that. He goes insane at points, and you can see the
people around him noticing he’s insane and not knowing what to do.
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Richard is jealous of all this,
which means he missed Oliver Stone’s
point.
That’s one of Alex Garland’s points,
but it’s not that complicated when you
read it.
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So if you’ve never seen those movies,
there’s a point where you’ll probably get irritated even though those scenes
are critical to who Alex is and what he’s seeking.
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And what he’s seeking is whack.
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Garland does a superb job making all
this coherent even if you’re not getting the references. It might detract for
you, but you won’t get lost or misunderstand the book.
That’s enough about Richard, as well
written as he is. The Beach also has great supporting characters. The
French couple is extremely likeable, Sal is totally believable as the Women In Charge
– the distances she’s willing to go to are even more authentic and credible because she’s so
completely human, not a caricature or flat villain. Her boyfriend that no one
likes isn’t a straw man or foil to Richard’s character – we all know someone
just like him. Even the well-armed pot plantation guard who’s really just an
old farmer is such a believable character. All these characters come off as
human and realistic.
It’s a great book about isolation, about
people, society, and social constructs. It talks about what we want, what we
need, and what we seek out, who we are and how far we’re willing to go to
defend what we’ve decided is important. It’s about being with the people
you love, and being stuck in a small place with people you don’t like. It's "serious literature", but it's also an adventure book, a travel book, a coming of age book in a very weird way. It’s
often compared to Heart Of Darkness, but I like The Beach’s
ending more.
In plot, characters, pacing,
development, archetypes, deeper symbolism, in all the important ways this is a
great book. It's worth reading more than once. I highly recommend it.
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