Another Day, Another Book Review

Recently I finished reading The Beach by Alex Garland. (What? I have a lot of time on my hands...) It was a perplexing experience. Garland re-creates the world of pretentious backpackers with careful precision: what drives them to seek out secret adventures and the understandable contempt they feel for other travelers like themselves. His creation of an idyllic community located on an inaccessible Thai island is tantalizing: why couldn't it really happen? Therefore, the first 80% of the book affords an enjoyable reading experience (except for the occasional disjointed Vietnam War reference). And then everything takes a bizarre and sinister turn, and the plot reaches its climax suddenly with a drug-fueled orgy of violence. (Shoot, did I just give away the ending?)

This felt familiar: a novel featuring an amazing world, created with care, and an author, unsatisfied with such an accomplishment, trying to bully his characters into acting out a convoluted plot. And I realized that the parallels are Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, though Stephenson's worlds are the more far-fetched and therefore, perhaps, more impressive creations.

No need to read for yourself unless you want to relive that special bafflement felt at the end of a Neal Stephenson novel. Or fantasize about a beautiful island paradise somewhere out to the south of Thailand. But if you do read it, ask yourself this: how do they get all that rice over those cliffs? I still can't figure that part out.