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Title: A pretentious mess of a tale
Review: "The Beach" was hyped far beyond its merits. Now we're told it's to be the basis of a movie. If it were not for these facts, I doubt if this rambling mess of a book would have made it into print. Novels are stories - or should be. And they should try to do more than pose. This book's great weakness is that it has no good, new or tangible idea. But did that worry the publishers? Of course not...
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