Alex Garland - The Beach
About the author:
Alex Garland, a British novelist, was born in 1970.
His first novel, The Beach, was published in 1996 and drew on his experiences as a backpacker. The novel, which quickly became a cult classic, was made into a movie by Danny Boyle with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role of Richard. But the movie did not stay completely true to the book.
His second novel, The Tesseract, was published in 1999 and his latest book, The Coma, was published in 2004.
The plot:
Everything begins, when Richard comes to a hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. His neighbour swears a lot and sometimes he mentions “the beach”. Next day Richard finds his neighbour dead in his room. He had committed suicide. On Richards door hangs a letter. In it, there is a map, which shows the way to “the beach”. The next days Richard finds some new friends – Etienne and Francoise. Richard tells them about the map, and Etienne makes a plan, to get there – He plans everything: the train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, the bus to Don Sal and the rest way to get to Ko Samui. There they spend a few weeks, just having fun, playing Frisbee, go swimming, look at fishes, and such things.
They rent two houses. Sometimes they talk with their neighbours, Zeph and Sammy, students who are smoking all the day. Francoise and Etienne made a plan how to come to “the beach” on the map and present it to Richard, who is delighted.
After Richard draws a map and slips it under Zeph and Sammys door, while they are sleeping - Francoise and Etienne don’t know anything about this – the three friends swim to “the beach”. It is a long way, and when they arrive there, they lie in the sand and get asleep.
Next day thy find a big dope field and when they recognise, that this is a field, made by human hands, they have to react very quickly, because there were coming some dope guards with machineguns. Richard, Etienne and Francoise run away as quickly as possible until they come to a cliff. They were discussing what to do now, when Richard just jumps down the cliff into a deep sea. Down there is a man, called Ted, who was already waiting for them. Jed brings them all to a little village. There they meet a lot of people. There are Sal (Sylvester), the leader, Bugs (Bunny), her husband, Keaty, who gets very quick a friend from Richard and his friends, Cassie, and Jessie, who are a pair, Unhygienix, the cook, three Swedes, who are good in fishing, Duffy (Duck), who killed himself in Ko Samui and gave Richard the map and only exists in his mind, and some other guys and girls.
In the first week, Richard became fever, and during this time, he asks Sal about the dope guards. She answers, that they have a deal: Everyone stays on their side and there shouldn’t come new people! When Richard gets healthy again, he sees the perfect life on the beach. Everyone is happy and he gets a lot of friends quickly. Everyone has got to do some work. There are four groups: Fishing, gardening cooking and carpentry. Richard goes to the fishing detail.
One day, the rice gets empty and they have to do a Rice Run, which means, that two people have to leave the beach to go to a city and bye some new Rice. Jed wanted Richard to come with him, and so they go by boat to Ko Pha-Ngan.
There Richard sees his face in a mirror the first time after more than three months. He got dark skin and freckles. And he meets Zeph and Sammy by chance. Richard tries to explain them that the beach doesn’t exist, but they don’t believe him. When Jed recognises, that Richard has given away the map, he first gets angry, but some time later, he understands it and just says, that they shouldn’t mention it to Sal.
When they are back on the beach, Richard kills a little shark, which was a very good meal for everyone and so Richard becomes some kind of a hero. But Richard stops fishing to help Jed with his work. So Keaty was able to change to the fishing detail.
Jed and Richard go through the jungle and watched Sammy, Zeph, and three other people on a neighbour island, with binoculars from their island. But they just hang around there, and don’t show the slightest inclination to swim to the real beach. When Jed tells this to Sal, he leaves out the fact that they have a map from Richard.
Next day they steal some grass from the dope fields and when they come back in the evening nearly everyone is ill. Keaty fished the wrong fish by error and so a lot of people got fish poisoned. A few days later Keaty comes to the camp with Sten, who is already dead, and shouts, that there was a shark attack. Richard knows that Keaty is fishing with Sten and Christo, but Christo is missing. So Richard runs down to the sea and searches for him. Richard finds him in a cave and brings him to the camp. Christo is badly hurt and not everyone is healthy again because of the fish poisoning.
A few days later Zeph, Sammy and the others swim to the beach. Richard sees everything. He could also see them when they find the dope fields, the guards come to them, shoot one guy, and carry away the other four.
The situation gets more and more problematic and so he makes a plan together with Etienne to get away from the beach and start again their normal life. Francoise, Keaty and Jed should come with them.
It is the night they want to go away, when suddenly the dope guards come to the camp. They tell the people in the camp, that they know that Richard has stolen some grass very often. They also say that they are not allowed to draw any maps, like Richard did it, and if they do this again, the dope guards will come again to kill everyone on the beach. They leave Zeph, Sammy and an Austrian pair in the camp, and go away.
Sal and some others get really angry about the fact that Richard has given away the map and so they start to punch him. They nearly kill him, but Etienne, Francoise, Keaty, and Jed come to help him with their fishing spears.
They take the boat back to Ko Samui. And after some troubles, because, they have no money at all, they started a normal life again. They also meet others, who had also gone away from the beach.
The beach as a symbol for perfect life was found in 1989 by Sal, Bugs, and Duffy, and ended, because of Richard and his friends, 6 years later in 1995.
THE END
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