If this is paradise,
I wish I had a lawnmower…
Talking Heads; (Nothing but) Flowers
I wish I had a lawnmower…
Talking Heads; (Nothing but) Flowers
Chances are that you have already either read the novel or seen the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Everyone has. It’s just one of those books that people refer to as ‘voice of the generation’ stuff and in this case the generation in question is Generation X: a generation lacking seX but on the road to eXcess anyway.
I have to say I loved the book more than the movie. The book brings around your senses the fragile environment of a backpacker; a feeling I have felt first-hand. To see this imaginable place imagined by someone else for you is not quite the same.
Backpackers are of two kinds:
The first kind travels but travels in luxury; stopping in fancy hotels, drinking away holidays in holiday resorts, comfortable transportation, sight-seeing only what’s on the Lonely Planet dogma and stick to their kind.
The second kind is misery personified. These people stay in the cheapest motels, spend all their money travelling to insane and isolated spots so as to get into the core of the country and meet loads of locals and strangers. The Beach, Alex Garland’s (The Tesseract, The Coma) debut novel, revolves around one such backpacker called Richard.
Richard, an English traveller, arrives in Bangkok and on the same night meets Daffy Duck. Daffy (obviously a pseudonym) is Scottish and shows signs of mental turmoil. He leaves behind a map for Richard so as to direct him to an island beach that is unruffled by tourism and commits suicide. Richard, who considers himself far from a tourist, is quite interested in this mystery island and decides to pursue this earthly paradise. He takes along with him Francoise and Etienne, a French couple.
On the way to the beach, at Koh Samui, Richard makes a copy of the original map for two Americans, Sammy and Zeph, that he meets there. After bribes, boats, swims, jumps and trekking, the trio finally reach the island beach, only to face the unexpected. The beach is inhabited by new-age traveller sort of community and under the somewhat regime of Sal and her lover Bugs. This is because these two, along with Daffy, were the first to discover the island. New comers to the island were usually not accepted but were not sent back either so as to destroy the secrecy of the place. On some questioning, Richard lies that he has not told about the island to anyone, and so the trio are accepted integrated into the island.
Richard should have been quite happy at the island, with his ambitions of leaving mainstream society behind accomplished but things are not so. Even though he is popular in the self-contained community, Richard is slightly going mad. He speaks to the ghost of Daffy Duck and spends most of his time alone. That is until all hell breaks loose. Francoise loves him now but even that is not enough to stop him going crazy. The secret he let out to the Americans, Sammy and Zeph, comes back with disastrous consequences and the paradise gained turns into paradise lost.
The book is a good mix of popular-culture, travel-writing, backpacker philosophy and fiction. The characters are well framed and the protagonist himself is a voice that many backpackers carry in their heads whilst travelling in South-East Asia. Comparisons with Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness were always inevitable but still, The Beach is a fresh landscape and deserves to be read. Watch it before the movie and maybe then you can compare the Francoise of your dreams with her sexy counterpart Virginie Ledoyen of the screen.
Or toy likewise with paradisiacal island beach.
If that is your ‘calling’.
I have to say I loved the book more than the movie. The book brings around your senses the fragile environment of a backpacker; a feeling I have felt first-hand. To see this imaginable place imagined by someone else for you is not quite the same.
Backpackers are of two kinds:
The first kind travels but travels in luxury; stopping in fancy hotels, drinking away holidays in holiday resorts, comfortable transportation, sight-seeing only what’s on the Lonely Planet dogma and stick to their kind.
The second kind is misery personified. These people stay in the cheapest motels, spend all their money travelling to insane and isolated spots so as to get into the core of the country and meet loads of locals and strangers. The Beach, Alex Garland’s (The Tesseract, The Coma) debut novel, revolves around one such backpacker called Richard.
Richard, an English traveller, arrives in Bangkok and on the same night meets Daffy Duck. Daffy (obviously a pseudonym) is Scottish and shows signs of mental turmoil. He leaves behind a map for Richard so as to direct him to an island beach that is unruffled by tourism and commits suicide. Richard, who considers himself far from a tourist, is quite interested in this mystery island and decides to pursue this earthly paradise. He takes along with him Francoise and Etienne, a French couple.
On the way to the beach, at Koh Samui, Richard makes a copy of the original map for two Americans, Sammy and Zeph, that he meets there. After bribes, boats, swims, jumps and trekking, the trio finally reach the island beach, only to face the unexpected. The beach is inhabited by new-age traveller sort of community and under the somewhat regime of Sal and her lover Bugs. This is because these two, along with Daffy, were the first to discover the island. New comers to the island were usually not accepted but were not sent back either so as to destroy the secrecy of the place. On some questioning, Richard lies that he has not told about the island to anyone, and so the trio are accepted integrated into the island.
Richard should have been quite happy at the island, with his ambitions of leaving mainstream society behind accomplished but things are not so. Even though he is popular in the self-contained community, Richard is slightly going mad. He speaks to the ghost of Daffy Duck and spends most of his time alone. That is until all hell breaks loose. Francoise loves him now but even that is not enough to stop him going crazy. The secret he let out to the Americans, Sammy and Zeph, comes back with disastrous consequences and the paradise gained turns into paradise lost.
The book is a good mix of popular-culture, travel-writing, backpacker philosophy and fiction. The characters are well framed and the protagonist himself is a voice that many backpackers carry in their heads whilst travelling in South-East Asia. Comparisons with Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness were always inevitable but still, The Beach is a fresh landscape and deserves to be read. Watch it before the movie and maybe then you can compare the Francoise of your dreams with her sexy counterpart Virginie Ledoyen of the screen.
Or toy likewise with paradisiacal island beach.
If that is your ‘calling’.
The Beach movie trailer
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