Rating: 5.0
The Beach is sort of a cross between Lord of the Flies and Apocalypse Now. It's a wonderfully intense story! While Richard is backpacking through southeast Asia, he discovers the map to "the Beach", which is supposedly a mythical Eden commune. Richard and a young French couple make it to this deserted island and discover paradise. They swim, fish, dance and have access to all the marijuana they can smoke. Then things start to go bad when two catastrophes happen in the same week. The tenuous order that these people hold starts to slide away into chaos. People become paranoid and dangerous and in the end some lose their humanity. The Beach hooked me in right from the beginning with it's exotic storyline, beautiful scenery and great writing. The New York Times Book Review called The Beach "....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."
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