The Beach (novel) The Beach (novel) The Beach is a 1996 novel by English author Alex Garland. Set in Thailand, it is the story of a young backpacker's search for a legendary, idyllic and isolated beach untouched by tourism, and his time there in its small, international community of backpackers. In 2000, it was adapted into a film directed by Danny Boyle and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read. In a cheap hotel on the Khao San Road in Bangkok, Richard, a young American backpacker, meets a mentally disturbed Scotsman going by the
Manhattan Beach (novel) Egan to attend a diver's reunion where she struggled into a US Army Mark V diving suit complete with heavy brass helmet and lead boots. Egan also met with Alfred Kolkin, an 86-year-old man who had worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a machinist during World War II. The "Los Angeles Review of Books", comparing Egan's novel to "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", wrote that "Manhattan Beach" is one of the rare books by a woman author that captures the viewpoint of a woman of New York. "Time" wrote that Egan's "prose is exquisite" and that she gives the