i first bought the beach (the novel, by alex garland) around the time it came out. i was around 18 at the time, and i completely identified with richard, the hero. like him, i spent a lot of my teens travelling to odd destinations, derooting myself from all people and places. richards pull is south east asia, mine was more south america, but as in his case, there were times where i got myself so lost in oblivion i wasnt sure where i was or what i was doing there, and there were sinister people and dark moments that punctured the "holiday"in technicaly sunny places. i use "holiday"in brackets since that is not really what it ever was in my case, unlike in richard's.
i remember buying the beach while passing through heathrow airport in transit, probably between moscow and montreal, the places where i was supposed to be living in those days. that was about 10 years ago, before domodedovo opened. back then, british airways still flew out of sheremetevo II, and they had this wierd schedule if you were trying to get to north america. you left moscow in the early evening, arrived in london in the early evening (thanks to the time difference), spent the night in a dodgy hotel attached to the airport (which you couldnt leave, as you hadnt gone throught british border control, which i suppose explains the barbed wire i dont think i imagined seeing). then the next morning a hotel alarm woke you and you went back to terminal 4 to continue on to canada. i was always grateful i got off in montreal. once that plane reached the western hemisphere, it became something like a bus in the sky, stopping at carious canadian cities along the way. after montreal was toronto, and i forget what came next. so i bought the beach at one of those airport bookshops (wh smith? waterstones?) and took it with me to the airport hotel to pass the time. i remeber ready it over the cheap "continental"breakfast we were given for lunch. it lasted me until dorval airport, and i was pleased.
after that, the film came out. i went to see it and was totally disappointed, that film really sucked despite having an all star cast. maybe the book just cant be adapted to film, although i blame the bad script. the film mixed my memories, and i forgot about the book.
but the book hasnt gone away, it is still a big sucess in the publishing industry, i know that now. when all the booksellers in my company were asked to choose their top books of the past 25 years, it made it easily into the top 25, alongside gabriel garcia marquez and margaret atwood. then recently penguin (the publisher) decided to realise a special edition series of books commemorating their anniversary (i forget which one...75 maybe?). the choose 36 titles and republished them in the original old-school format. and of all the "significant"works of the better part of the past century, they choose the beach. and then nostalgia overwealmed me and i had a sudden desire to see if 10 years later the book still impresses me as it did, or if it was just part of my teenage phase.
but no, the book is amazing...to me at least. i could see why someone else wouldnt like it, but i again read it nearly in one night.
and now i will put it one my shelf, maybe for another 10 years...we shall see.
2 commentaires:
Hi,
I can understand that you like this book because you read it at a certain stage in your life when its themes matched your own concerns, but is there anything about the book itself - as a piece of writing rather than as a momento of your own experience - that you admire?
I ask because I feel that the book is undeservedly popular. People read it because people go through a travelling/discovering themselves kind of phase and this novel taps right into that.
But as literature I found it awful. I've not much to go on here as I read it years and years ago and can't remember much, but nothing about the writing itself made any impression on me at all.
All I really remember about it was how 'Lord of the Flies' it was, almost as if the same story had simply been updated. And, worse, told through a repetitive first person narrative full of boring re-telling of dreams that bangs on the same themes so hard the interest just dissipates.
Of course I could be totally wrong, and given the respect the book gets from people such as yourself and its position in best-seller lists like those you've just outlined, I probably am wrong. Perhaps I ought to read it again!
Anyway, when are you off on your next round of travels?
no, obviously the beach is not great literature. i aggree it is badly written and could have used a better editor (although i liked thedream sequences. i put the book in the same category as Shantaram, which is also badly written and edited, yet strangely addictive, even at 1000 pages. i think i am attracted to these kinds of odd adventure stories.
as for your question, next round of long-term travelling begins next march, although i have some things planned before then....in the short run though i am a bit grounded: i start teaching in about 10 days, scary.
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