Reading Group Roundup

The report this month comes from Standford Hill where the group read Alex Garland’s The Beach, made famous by the film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Richard lands in East Asia in search of an earthly utopia. In Thailand, he is given a map promising an unknown island, a secluded beach – and a new way of life. What Richard finds when he gets there is breathtaking – more extraordinary, more frightening than his wildest dreams.

The book charts the collapse of paradise into nightmare dystopia and it sparked great discussion and lots of questions in the group:

‘Did video games desensitise Richard and make him immune to violence?’

‘Was he a psychopath or was he experiencing drug-induced psychosis?‘

Comparisons were made with William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies, about a group of schoolboys who descend into savagery and violence when they are marooned on an island after a plane crash.

Lots of speculation about the meaning of the book. Does it show the inevitable collapse of any idyllic paradise into brutality and destruction, and the emergence of ruthless and controlling ‘leaders’ like Sal?

Would we want to live on the island, even before it begins to fall apart? Holiday experiences were recalled, including the eventual boredom people remembered and the need to get away from ‘just chilling’. One member suggested that humans need to feel danger to feel alive.

Talk moved on to the film, which the group thought was disappointing in comparison with the book: ‘Too many changes to the book. It made Richard seem unhinged in a way that he wasn’t in the book’; ‘In the book you have access to his inner monologue so you can see both sides of his character’. And most felt the novel ending was much better than the movie:

‘The book didn’t tie things up neatly, it left the reader wondering how things would continue at the beach. And it left a sense it could all still be carrying on now’.

Prison Reading Groups (PRG) runs over 100 groups in more than 80 prisons nationwide. Groups choose what they read and are given new copies to keep or pass on to others.

PRG is part of Give a Book.