The Beach
Alex Garland
Read by Daniel Philpott
Isis Unabridged
Running time 12hrs35mins, £18.99 mail order 0800 731 5637
Buy it at BOL
Read by Steven Mackintosh
Penguin Abridged
Running time 4hrs, £8.99
Buy it at BOL
DiCaprio hype has made the backpackers' dope-soaked idyll on a Thai island beach and its subsequent disintegration into violence and death the best-known story around at the moment. Both these narrators handle the various accents and the changing pace and moods skilfully. So why spend more than 12 hours listening to the unabridged version when you can get a good story in four?
Richard, who finds the beach, and the other aimless bratpackers, all born after the Vietnam War ended, are in Thailand chasing the Vietnam myth created by Hollywood. Richard is either acting out Platoon or he's playing a computer game where losers are 'toast'; for the commune, batteries for their Game Boy are as essential as rice.
This sustained Vietnam fantasy is missing in the abridged version and, consequently, so too is the irony which gives the novel its guts. However, the abridged version is a fast-paced adventure and, with Richard caught up in a Lord of the Flies horror, it is faithful to the novel's strong narrative voice.
The unabridged version gives us the authorial voice as well: this is the countdown to doomsday for fragile parts of the globe which find themselves on the much-beaten track of 'Spaced Invaders' chasing dope and clutching their Lonely Planets.
One audiobook will eat up the miles on the M4; the other will absorb you for days and keep you thinking long after.
