How Deep is the Water?

This weekend I read The Beach by Alex Garland. I'm not sure why I picked it up. I checked it out in the bookstore a few weeks ago, skimmed over the first few pages, and put it back, thinking it was probably another cooler-than-thou GenX piece of crap. But I kept thinking about it, and the next time I visited the bookstore I bought it.

Although I'm fairly well-traveled, I've never done the backpacking scene, and now I feel like I'm too old for it. Maybe that's why I bought the book - a vicarious trip down what-could-have been lane. Redgardless of the reason, I found it to be an engaging read - I finished it in two days - and whenever I opened it I found myself completely immersed in the story.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot. The protagonist is a young man named Richard, who is given a map to a hidden, unspoiled beach in Thailand by a fellow traveler who then commits suicide. Richard and two French acquaintances set off to find the Beach, and when they do, learn that utopia isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The jacket of the book is accompanied by glowing quotes from notable outlets such as the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post ("furiously intelligent", "A truly awesome piece of work"). When I finished the book, I sat thinking about it for a while. I suppose that it's a mark of a good book if it pushes one to think, but mostly what I was thinking is that it didn't seem terribly deep or original. Utopias don't work. Haven't we already covered that in Heart of Darkness (explicity referenced in The Beach), Lord of the Flies (implied), or Babel Tower (my own reference and a much stronger work)?

Garland delivers a stinging critique of the backpacker lifestyle, one that is all the stronger because he speaks from experience. He never crosses the line into the isn't-everything-ironic ennui that permeates much of this type of fiction, and while there are shocking events in the beach, he doesn't create them for shock value. But while it was enjoyable read, The Beach never reached the level of great fiction. I've never seen the allure of the search for purity in broken third-world countries. Maybe it's why I also didn't see much to be amazed by in this book.