The Beach - Alex Garland

This is a book that EVERY teenager should read. It is an exciting, fast-paced and very contemporary novel, as much a defining aspect of the 1990’s as Britpop, Trainspotting, Men Behaving Badly, and Cocaine. Read this book anytime, anywhere and you will be instantly transported to South East Asia This is Club 18-30 fiction more intelligent and brilliant than a myriad of ‘literary’ novels. where the smells, sounds and sights of youth sparkle like phosphorescence in the sea.

From this review you wouldn’t think The Beach would be my kind of book, but it remains one of my absolute favourite novels. It is single-handedly responsible for my love of novels with short snapshot chapters and was the first book I read a second time (and then a third.) I wish Alex Garland would return to fiction writing.

8.5 out of 10