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End of the Ocean Lib/E
From the author of the popular cult classics Frank Sinatra in a Blender and A Swollen Red Sun comes a riveting novel of redemption and suspense that asks the question: just how far are you willing to go for love? Would you give up everything you've ever known? Risk your freedom? Risk your life?
When newly divorced Sage arrives in Bali, his only plan is to drink on the beach until his money runs out and then return home to start over. So he's caught by surprise when he falls in love with the country and its people, particularly the attractive and considerate Ratri. Soon Sage can no longer see himself living anywhere else, even as his funds dwindle and his visa's expiration date nears. Increasingly desperate to stay with Ratri, Sage finds himself being recruited by a drug-smuggling ring-in a country where drug trafficking is punishable by death. The promised pay-out would be enough to set Sage and Ratri up for life, but only if Sage isn't caught. Will Sage go home and risk the life he envisions with Ratri, or risk everything to stay and make that life possible?
Both lyrical and suspenseful, intimate and ambitious, The End of the Ocean is an unforgettable look at a brutal business in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
When newly divorced Sage arrives in Bali, his only plan is to drink on the beach until his money runs out and then return home to start over. So he's caught by surprise when he falls in love with the country and its people, particularly the attractive and considerate Ratri. Soon Sage can no longer see himself living anywhere else, even as his funds dwindle and his visa's expiration date nears. Increasingly desperate to stay with Ratri, Sage finds himself being recruited by a drug-smuggling ring-in a country where drug trafficking is punishable by death. The promised pay-out would be enough to set Sage and Ratri up for life, but only if Sage isn't caught. Will Sage go home and risk the life he envisions with Ratri, or risk everything to stay and make that life possible?
Both lyrical and suspenseful, intimate and ambitious, The End of the Ocean is an unforgettable look at a brutal business in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
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First published June 11, 2019
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About the author
Matthew McBride
18 books70 followersMatthew McBride is a former assembly-line worker living in rural Missouri. In his words, “These people are the people I know and see every day, and this is the world I know.” He is also the author of the cult hit Frank Sinatra in a Blender.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 13, 2020
Matthew McBride does it again!
This is the most intricately detailed novel I've read by him.
There's a powerful and sweet love story embedded in this beautifully written suspenser.
I was sweating bullets throughout the final 75-80 pages.
If I attempt a synopsis, I'll blow it for first time readers of this outstanding "international" thriller.
i.e., it takes place in Bali and later Thailand.
An American we know only as "Sage" is coming off of a nightmarish divorce.
He's been cuckolded in an especially humiliating way.
We learn that his wife has left him for a really fat guy with a tiny wiener. Sage knows this because he "accidentally" happens to glance over at his rival's privates in a shared urinal during divorce proceedings.
To forget everything about his wife -the only woman he's ever loved, he travels as far away from America as he can afford. Bali ... He gets drunk a lot, makes friends with a former boxer from Australia named Wayne, and meets the loveliest, kindest, dearest woman he's ever encountered.
He falls in love.
He also meets gentlemen heavily involved in a fatal occupation.
Warning: Do Not Smuggle Drugs!
As the banner in the airport reads:
"WELCOME TO INDONESIA DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS"!
and the bastards mean it.
Highest Recommendation.
This is the most intricately detailed novel I've read by him.
There's a powerful and sweet love story embedded in this beautifully written suspenser.
I was sweating bullets throughout the final 75-80 pages.
If I attempt a synopsis, I'll blow it for first time readers of this outstanding "international" thriller.
i.e., it takes place in Bali and later Thailand.
An American we know only as "Sage" is coming off of a nightmarish divorce.
He's been cuckolded in an especially humiliating way.
We learn that his wife has left him for a really fat guy with a tiny wiener. Sage knows this because he "accidentally" happens to glance over at his rival's privates in a shared urinal during divorce proceedings.
To forget everything about his wife -the only woman he's ever loved, he travels as far away from America as he can afford. Bali ... He gets drunk a lot, makes friends with a former boxer from Australia named Wayne, and meets the loveliest, kindest, dearest woman he's ever encountered.
He falls in love.
He also meets gentlemen heavily involved in a fatal occupation.
Warning: Do Not Smuggle Drugs!
As the banner in the airport reads:
"WELCOME TO INDONESIA DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS"!
and the bastards mean it.
Highest Recommendation.
May 22, 2020
A man went to a country to find himself, loved the beauty, the people and fell in love. An Australian becomes friends with him and they spend a lot of time together. His money runs out and he's going to have to leave his love and go back to America . But wait, his friend gives him a way to stay, only catch is it's a death sentence if he gets caught. The story picks up pace and kept my interest. No spoilers. Nothing is as it appears and you won't know until the end!
June 25, 2019
As I slip ever more deeply into my golden years, I find that I much prefer stories that take me to places I have never been --- where things happen that are impossible, page by page, to predict. Such books are becoming increasingly difficult to consistently find, which is what makes END OF THE OCEAN, Matthew McBride’s latest novel, such a pleasure.
Most of the book takes place in Bali, an Indonesian island known for its scenery, bars and yoga retreats. END OF THE OCEAN almost immediately introduces the reader to Sage, an American who is the primary focus of the story. Sage, post-divorce, has made what appears to be an ill-advised decision to take what money he has left and travel to Bali, where he has never been, and hang out until he has exhausted his financial wherewithal, at which point he intends to return home. It’s an impulsive action, but certainly one that is not unheard of. McBride’s talent in describing his protagonist is such that the reader is almost immediately put in the mind of a friend or classmate who has done the same thing, with more or less disastrous results.
For Sage, it is a mixed bag at first. He is unfamiliar with the language, currency and customs of Bali, and his fish-out-of-water state of mind goes a long way towards creating a narrative where the reader has absolutely no idea what will occur next. What occurs next for Sage is that he is gobsmacked when he succumbs to the beauty and allure of Bali in general and a young woman named Ratri in particular. Ratri is just what the doctor ordered in terms of healing Sage’s broken heart. His problem is that he is rapidly running out of money.
Sage’s point of view alternates with that of the members of a group of drug smugglers. They include a quiet, dedicated family man who is engaging in this trade to give his family monetary support; a surf bum for whom the narcotics industry provides the funds to fuel the hedonistic lifestyle to which he aspires; a “horse” who does the heavy lifting in terms of smuggling the illegal drugs into the country; and, most significantly, an enigmatic Australian with the improbable name of Wayne Tender who, interestingly enough, meets and engages Sage in conversation on the plane ride from the United States to Indonesia.
The manner and method of drug smuggling described in END OF THE OCEAN is set against the backdrop of Indonesia’s draconian drug laws, which, among other things, impose the death penalty for drug trafficking. It is seemingly inevitable that Sage’s path will cross with Wayne on the small island, and indeed it does. Sage needs money to stay in Bali with Ratri just as Wayne needs a new mule to smuggle some diamonds onto the island. By no means is Sage a criminal, but he is desperate. Love and desperation are prime motivators, and Sage has plenty of both. Things can go wrong, however, and they do, even while McBride is quietly waiting to yank the rug out from under the feet of his unsuspecting readers by story’s end.
Each and all of McBride’s novels defy their own expectations. While there is a bit of (expected) violence in his latest, there is not much at all. Instead, he relies on the exotic flora and fauna of Bali to carry the story, with some edge-of-the-seat descriptions of drug smuggling to carry things along. Additionally, anyone who has ever been to an unfamiliar place and felt as if they were in the middle of a game where the rules kept changing will find much to love in END OF THE OCEAN, where the uninitiated Sage is gently (and occasionally roughly) buffeted from pillar to post with little understanding of what is occurring. Come for the caper and stay for the story.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Most of the book takes place in Bali, an Indonesian island known for its scenery, bars and yoga retreats. END OF THE OCEAN almost immediately introduces the reader to Sage, an American who is the primary focus of the story. Sage, post-divorce, has made what appears to be an ill-advised decision to take what money he has left and travel to Bali, where he has never been, and hang out until he has exhausted his financial wherewithal, at which point he intends to return home. It’s an impulsive action, but certainly one that is not unheard of. McBride’s talent in describing his protagonist is such that the reader is almost immediately put in the mind of a friend or classmate who has done the same thing, with more or less disastrous results.
For Sage, it is a mixed bag at first. He is unfamiliar with the language, currency and customs of Bali, and his fish-out-of-water state of mind goes a long way towards creating a narrative where the reader has absolutely no idea what will occur next. What occurs next for Sage is that he is gobsmacked when he succumbs to the beauty and allure of Bali in general and a young woman named Ratri in particular. Ratri is just what the doctor ordered in terms of healing Sage’s broken heart. His problem is that he is rapidly running out of money.
Sage’s point of view alternates with that of the members of a group of drug smugglers. They include a quiet, dedicated family man who is engaging in this trade to give his family monetary support; a surf bum for whom the narcotics industry provides the funds to fuel the hedonistic lifestyle to which he aspires; a “horse” who does the heavy lifting in terms of smuggling the illegal drugs into the country; and, most significantly, an enigmatic Australian with the improbable name of Wayne Tender who, interestingly enough, meets and engages Sage in conversation on the plane ride from the United States to Indonesia.
The manner and method of drug smuggling described in END OF THE OCEAN is set against the backdrop of Indonesia’s draconian drug laws, which, among other things, impose the death penalty for drug trafficking. It is seemingly inevitable that Sage’s path will cross with Wayne on the small island, and indeed it does. Sage needs money to stay in Bali with Ratri just as Wayne needs a new mule to smuggle some diamonds onto the island. By no means is Sage a criminal, but he is desperate. Love and desperation are prime motivators, and Sage has plenty of both. Things can go wrong, however, and they do, even while McBride is quietly waiting to yank the rug out from under the feet of his unsuspecting readers by story’s end.
Each and all of McBride’s novels defy their own expectations. While there is a bit of (expected) violence in his latest, there is not much at all. Instead, he relies on the exotic flora and fauna of Bali to carry the story, with some edge-of-the-seat descriptions of drug smuggling to carry things along. Additionally, anyone who has ever been to an unfamiliar place and felt as if they were in the middle of a game where the rules kept changing will find much to love in END OF THE OCEAN, where the uninitiated Sage is gently (and occasionally roughly) buffeted from pillar to post with little understanding of what is occurring. Come for the caper and stay for the story.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
February 23, 2020
LOVED Frank Sinatra in a Blender.. it was nothing like this book.
I can’t say much about it without revealing the entire plot, which was thin and boring. Nothing happens at all until almost the end, and I would have DNF’d it if it wasn’t a Christmas gift. I actually fell asleep reading it 3/4 through the book and the story was still pointless at that point. So many stereotypes in this book about islanders and women.
My rating for this book is BLAH
I can’t say much about it without revealing the entire plot, which was thin and boring. Nothing happens at all until almost the end, and I would have DNF’d it if it wasn’t a Christmas gift. I actually fell asleep reading it 3/4 through the book and the story was still pointless at that point. So many stereotypes in this book about islanders and women.
My rating for this book is BLAH
September 2, 2019
This is the first book I've read that's been set in Bali - I really enjoyed reading about a place so new through the eyes of someone who was also new to it. The way the book was written (especially the setting) was great and helped me feel immersed into the story. The plot overall was interesting as well, although some of the characters felt a little underdeveloped personality wise. The ending definitely took me off guard, which was a pleasant surprise.
January 18, 2020
Just Plain Good.
McBride, this guy is good. A tale of love, violence, Bali, Thailand, sex , drugs, betrayal and a lot of other good stuff all rolled into one well written and exciting package. As good as it gets. McBride is on my must read list.
McBride, this guy is good. A tale of love, violence, Bali, Thailand, sex , drugs, betrayal and a lot of other good stuff all rolled into one well written and exciting package. As good as it gets. McBride is on my must read list.
April 7, 2025
Our protagonist arrives in Bali to drown himself in alcohol, numbing the sorrows life has cast upon him. But he’s surprised by the effect this place has on him when he falls in love with a local. A misstep, getting involved with a drug trafficking circle, leaves his fate hanging on a pendulum. On one end: a beautiful future with his new beloved. On the other: a death sentence.
I’ll admit, my main hook for this book was the Bali setting. Reading it threw me into a nostalgic spiral, reliving my own trip there. That said, the story also delves into a darker side, pulling readers into the gritty world of drug rings and keeping them on edge. Romance is the underlying plotline, and its presence weighs heavily throughout. As someone who doesn’t typically read romance, I found some scenes a bit too cliché for my taste.
Overall, I felt the suspense side was fine with on-and-off thriller vibes. Keeping the romance part aside, it was a book that captured the essence of the place well, along with the American characters. But what changed my outlook toward this book was the end. I had anticipated one of the twists, but then it took some new turns I had not expected. The book also had a sort of open ending that leaves the reader guessing, which direction does this flight go? ✈️ (I wish I knew some parts of it and hoped the author would gave closure in the epilogue.)
I’ll admit, my main hook for this book was the Bali setting. Reading it threw me into a nostalgic spiral, reliving my own trip there. That said, the story also delves into a darker side, pulling readers into the gritty world of drug rings and keeping them on edge. Romance is the underlying plotline, and its presence weighs heavily throughout. As someone who doesn’t typically read romance, I found some scenes a bit too cliché for my taste.
Overall, I felt the suspense side was fine with on-and-off thriller vibes. Keeping the romance part aside, it was a book that captured the essence of the place well, along with the American characters. But what changed my outlook toward this book was the end. I had anticipated one of the twists, but then it took some new turns I had not expected. The book also had a sort of open ending that leaves the reader guessing, which direction does this flight go? ✈️ (I wish I knew some parts of it and hoped the author would gave closure in the epilogue.)
August 11, 2022
Quite a few typos in this book, and a bunch of triggering sex scenes that I could have done without, but I sure loved the surprise at the end.
This story is about a man whose wife cheats on him, more than once, so she divorces him to marry her latest, and he goes to drown his tears to Bali, "the end of the ocean."
He was from Missouri, the same place I was born, and he had been a sales man, and though it was never explained why, he was on unemployment.
He goes by the idiotic name of Sage, and we learned at the end of the book that his name is really Michael. I didn't have much respect for this protagonist.
On the 15-hour flight to bali, Sage meets a man named Wayne tender, supposedly from australia. He farts the whole way through the plane trip. Coincidentally Sage runs into him at a restaurant where he goes to eat. Wayne's girlfriend works there, and after they eat and have a couple beers, Wayne tells his girlfriend to make them a couple of milkshakes. She reluctantly makes them, and Sage has no clue what is coming.
" 'no, you take mushroom shake,' she said. 'Magic mushroom.'
Sage looked at her desperately for advice of some kind but there was none. 'I... I do what? What did I do - what did you say'
Leaning toward him, very close, looking into his eyes, she took his chin in both hands and whispered, 'you do mushroom shake. Much mushroom. Wayne tell me make two shake, Dua - to make strong. It legal here to have mushroom. Sorry you not know. I thought he tell you. Wayne Tender asshole like that' "
That part was pretty funny. Wayne and Sage get on their motorbikes, and drive through a monkey reserve close by. Sage stops and has a conversation with monkeys.
I remember when I was young I did mushrooms a couple of times. They're really fun. I was in this nightclub, and I went over to the under-21 side, and there was this guy dancing like he was swimming, and I was laughing and laughing; it was hilarious.
I hope they make those things legal In california. They're good for treating mental illness.
The man who rents Sage a motorbike, has his relative bring the motorbike over to the hotel Sage is staying at. Sage is impressed with the young beautiful Javanese girl. When Sage goes the next day to the man's laundry business to sign papers for the motorbike, he sees her again. He meets her cousin at the laundry, and the cousin says he'll set them up on a date. The date is going to different shrines to pray to their God for their relatives. Of course Sage doesn't mind this because he's accompanying a beautiful Javanese girl whose name is Ratri.
In no time at all, Sage is in love with Ratri. They start having sex, and this is where I almost gave this book two stars. You don't really need to tell the whole story when someone is having sex. It doesn't do anything for the reader, and for me it's triggering. So it pisses me off when the authors include these f****** sex scenes. And it's not love for the characters; when you're young, it's hormones.
🤬
So now poor Sage's visa is almost up, and he's also nearly out of money. He's not going to get any more unemployment, unless he goes into the office to see them. Well, he's 10,000 miles away from the unemployment office in missouri, so one day he starts telling his sad tale to Wayne. Unbeknownst to Sage, Wayne is in the smuggling business, at least that's what we think right now. So Wayne sets him up to be a mule, except he calls it "being a horse."
Wayne Leases a house in Bali, and he's talking to Sage about a restaurant he recommended that Sage take Ratri to. Sage is nervous lest Ratri doesn't like it, and Wayne tells him that Sage doesn't get it, these people are poor, and they just don't go out to dinner, so there's no not liking it. He goes on to say that when you rent a house you pay through the arse thanks to Julia Roberts.
" 'Everyone saw that movie didn't they?'
'I liked her better in that other one, myself,' Wayne said. 'The one where she plays a whore.' "
I didn't know what they were talking about, so I had to look up what movie Julia Roberts was in that took place in Bali. It was a movie that was taken from a book about a white woman who feels she hasn't realized herself, so she divorces her husband, and takes off to Bali and has this AMAZING experience. So they thought that would be a good idea to make a movie out of. I'm glad I never saw it.
Wayne tells Sage that he's setting him up to smuggle a load of diamonds from another Indonesian Island back to Bali, and Sage is extremely nervous about it, but the promise of earning $20,000 for one smuggling trip keeps him going. He just can't face the thought of leaving Ratri. Wayne is starting to get crabby about his nervousness, and tells him that part of his test run for the smuggling trip is to go and see Grady, another mule who has gotten picked up at the airport smuggling dope in. Now Grady is in Karibokan prison, where tourists are imprisoned when they get caught trying to smuggle heroin or whatever out of Bali. Grady needs to be told that Wayne's business partner is lining the bail for Grady's release up with the judge.
Sage just about shits his pants going into this prison, he's so nervous, but when he finally makes it inside, the woman at the desk where he goes to sign in tells him that Grady has died.
" 'He kill himself,' she said. 'His cellmate say it was suicide.'
'Suicide?' Sage said. 'You're saying he... He killed himself with a... With a plastic bag?'
She said that was correct. 'Grady hang himself.'
'thank you,' Sage said standing, preparing to leave the room, preparing to run from the room, knowing no one killed himself with a plastic bag, not even in a place like this."
Sage flies to the other Island, where he's to pick up the load of diamonds he is going to smuggle back into Bali, and meets nothing but obstacles, in the way of completing his mission. His connections are seemingly stalling him, so he spends the few days there getting drunk and trying to convince himself that he can go through with this, constantly reminding himself of the life he will have with Ratri when he's done. When he's in the airport ready to fly back to Bali, he tries to talk himself into relaxing. He's in a stall in the bathroom, working on his breathing:
"relax: he took a few deep breaths. Remembered what the self-help videos he watched suggested, that if he wanted to be a success he must believe he was a success.
Breathe: out from his mouth and in through his nose. He envisioned himself a new man, walking, stalwartley, backpack in hand. Proudly from the shithouse he would emerge, and with a fortune in diamonds the Indonesian government knew about [because Wayne bribed them to look the other way], he would board a plane to Bali without any doubts.
He flushed the toilet and left the stall and washed his face in the sink, scrubbing it with soap that smelled like lye. It felt good to feel that clean but the strongest soap they made could not wash away the guilt he carried."
Ngyn is a native Balinese, who is a partner of Wayne's. He has a storage unit where he has dug a hole in the dirt floor, and buries his stash of money from his business with Wayne. Wayne smuggles methamphetamine into Bali. At least that's what we think right now.
Ngyn has gone to his storage:
"He circled the building and removed the keys from his pocket and slid the correct key in the hole and spun it. The lock opened. Ngyn turned the handle and stepped inside. It was dark. He walked several steps, to the center of the room, pulling the string for the light bulb, but nothing happened. He pulled the string again, still nothing. It clicked.
The door slammed shut behind him. He jumped. It was very dark. Ngyn saw nothing, but he knew what was coming. Strong hands grabbed him, around his neck, pulling him off his feet. A second voice, in indonesian, saying hold him down hold him down as Ngyn begged for his life and told them he had money. That he would pay if they would let him go.
They told him they'd already found his money then stabbed him in the guts. Gagged him and bound his hands. the man who had closed the door, slim, dirty, covered in gang tattoos, walking to the center of the room, screwed a light bulb in the socket and pulled the string. The light came on. Ngyn, still conscious, bleeding heavily, screamed into the gag, begging with his eyes as the man walked toward him, a freshly sharpened machete in his hand. He swung, with no warning, decapitating Ngyn, as the other man, the one who had previously held him, used the knife he'd stabbed Ngyn with to cut away loose skin, until he could tear the head free and drop it in a sack.
After turning off the light, they locked the lock and rode away."
So the whole thing was a setup. Wayne turns out to be from Kansas, working with the drug enforcement agency, working in Indonesia to discourage tourists from trying to smuggle heroin out of the island. Ratri was hired to play a part with Sage. Sage is taken down in the airport when he returns to Bali, and is imprisoned in Karibokan jail.
Wayne comes to see him there, and tells him the truth.
The author's successful and extremely realistic evocation of the huge amount of nervousness and stress that a smuggler would feel trying to smuggle diamonds or drugs through an airport and the customs was what redeemed this book, from the two stars I would have given it for the triggering sex scenes.
This story is about a man whose wife cheats on him, more than once, so she divorces him to marry her latest, and he goes to drown his tears to Bali, "the end of the ocean."
He was from Missouri, the same place I was born, and he had been a sales man, and though it was never explained why, he was on unemployment.
He goes by the idiotic name of Sage, and we learned at the end of the book that his name is really Michael. I didn't have much respect for this protagonist.
On the 15-hour flight to bali, Sage meets a man named Wayne tender, supposedly from australia. He farts the whole way through the plane trip. Coincidentally Sage runs into him at a restaurant where he goes to eat. Wayne's girlfriend works there, and after they eat and have a couple beers, Wayne tells his girlfriend to make them a couple of milkshakes. She reluctantly makes them, and Sage has no clue what is coming.
" 'no, you take mushroom shake,' she said. 'Magic mushroom.'
Sage looked at her desperately for advice of some kind but there was none. 'I... I do what? What did I do - what did you say'
Leaning toward him, very close, looking into his eyes, she took his chin in both hands and whispered, 'you do mushroom shake. Much mushroom. Wayne tell me make two shake, Dua - to make strong. It legal here to have mushroom. Sorry you not know. I thought he tell you. Wayne Tender asshole like that' "
That part was pretty funny. Wayne and Sage get on their motorbikes, and drive through a monkey reserve close by. Sage stops and has a conversation with monkeys.
I remember when I was young I did mushrooms a couple of times. They're really fun. I was in this nightclub, and I went over to the under-21 side, and there was this guy dancing like he was swimming, and I was laughing and laughing; it was hilarious.
I hope they make those things legal In california. They're good for treating mental illness.
The man who rents Sage a motorbike, has his relative bring the motorbike over to the hotel Sage is staying at. Sage is impressed with the young beautiful Javanese girl. When Sage goes the next day to the man's laundry business to sign papers for the motorbike, he sees her again. He meets her cousin at the laundry, and the cousin says he'll set them up on a date. The date is going to different shrines to pray to their God for their relatives. Of course Sage doesn't mind this because he's accompanying a beautiful Javanese girl whose name is Ratri.
In no time at all, Sage is in love with Ratri. They start having sex, and this is where I almost gave this book two stars. You don't really need to tell the whole story when someone is having sex. It doesn't do anything for the reader, and for me it's triggering. So it pisses me off when the authors include these f****** sex scenes. And it's not love for the characters; when you're young, it's hormones.
🤬
So now poor Sage's visa is almost up, and he's also nearly out of money. He's not going to get any more unemployment, unless he goes into the office to see them. Well, he's 10,000 miles away from the unemployment office in missouri, so one day he starts telling his sad tale to Wayne. Unbeknownst to Sage, Wayne is in the smuggling business, at least that's what we think right now. So Wayne sets him up to be a mule, except he calls it "being a horse."
Wayne Leases a house in Bali, and he's talking to Sage about a restaurant he recommended that Sage take Ratri to. Sage is nervous lest Ratri doesn't like it, and Wayne tells him that Sage doesn't get it, these people are poor, and they just don't go out to dinner, so there's no not liking it. He goes on to say that when you rent a house you pay through the arse thanks to Julia Roberts.
" 'Everyone saw that movie didn't they?'
'I liked her better in that other one, myself,' Wayne said. 'The one where she plays a whore.' "
I didn't know what they were talking about, so I had to look up what movie Julia Roberts was in that took place in Bali. It was a movie that was taken from a book about a white woman who feels she hasn't realized herself, so she divorces her husband, and takes off to Bali and has this AMAZING experience. So they thought that would be a good idea to make a movie out of. I'm glad I never saw it.
Wayne tells Sage that he's setting him up to smuggle a load of diamonds from another Indonesian Island back to Bali, and Sage is extremely nervous about it, but the promise of earning $20,000 for one smuggling trip keeps him going. He just can't face the thought of leaving Ratri. Wayne is starting to get crabby about his nervousness, and tells him that part of his test run for the smuggling trip is to go and see Grady, another mule who has gotten picked up at the airport smuggling dope in. Now Grady is in Karibokan prison, where tourists are imprisoned when they get caught trying to smuggle heroin or whatever out of Bali. Grady needs to be told that Wayne's business partner is lining the bail for Grady's release up with the judge.
Sage just about shits his pants going into this prison, he's so nervous, but when he finally makes it inside, the woman at the desk where he goes to sign in tells him that Grady has died.
" 'He kill himself,' she said. 'His cellmate say it was suicide.'
'Suicide?' Sage said. 'You're saying he... He killed himself with a... With a plastic bag?'
She said that was correct. 'Grady hang himself.'
'thank you,' Sage said standing, preparing to leave the room, preparing to run from the room, knowing no one killed himself with a plastic bag, not even in a place like this."
Sage flies to the other Island, where he's to pick up the load of diamonds he is going to smuggle back into Bali, and meets nothing but obstacles, in the way of completing his mission. His connections are seemingly stalling him, so he spends the few days there getting drunk and trying to convince himself that he can go through with this, constantly reminding himself of the life he will have with Ratri when he's done. When he's in the airport ready to fly back to Bali, he tries to talk himself into relaxing. He's in a stall in the bathroom, working on his breathing:
"relax: he took a few deep breaths. Remembered what the self-help videos he watched suggested, that if he wanted to be a success he must believe he was a success.
Breathe: out from his mouth and in through his nose. He envisioned himself a new man, walking, stalwartley, backpack in hand. Proudly from the shithouse he would emerge, and with a fortune in diamonds the Indonesian government knew about [because Wayne bribed them to look the other way], he would board a plane to Bali without any doubts.
He flushed the toilet and left the stall and washed his face in the sink, scrubbing it with soap that smelled like lye. It felt good to feel that clean but the strongest soap they made could not wash away the guilt he carried."
Ngyn is a native Balinese, who is a partner of Wayne's. He has a storage unit where he has dug a hole in the dirt floor, and buries his stash of money from his business with Wayne. Wayne smuggles methamphetamine into Bali. At least that's what we think right now.
Ngyn has gone to his storage:
"He circled the building and removed the keys from his pocket and slid the correct key in the hole and spun it. The lock opened. Ngyn turned the handle and stepped inside. It was dark. He walked several steps, to the center of the room, pulling the string for the light bulb, but nothing happened. He pulled the string again, still nothing. It clicked.
The door slammed shut behind him. He jumped. It was very dark. Ngyn saw nothing, but he knew what was coming. Strong hands grabbed him, around his neck, pulling him off his feet. A second voice, in indonesian, saying hold him down hold him down as Ngyn begged for his life and told them he had money. That he would pay if they would let him go.
They told him they'd already found his money then stabbed him in the guts. Gagged him and bound his hands. the man who had closed the door, slim, dirty, covered in gang tattoos, walking to the center of the room, screwed a light bulb in the socket and pulled the string. The light came on. Ngyn, still conscious, bleeding heavily, screamed into the gag, begging with his eyes as the man walked toward him, a freshly sharpened machete in his hand. He swung, with no warning, decapitating Ngyn, as the other man, the one who had previously held him, used the knife he'd stabbed Ngyn with to cut away loose skin, until he could tear the head free and drop it in a sack.
After turning off the light, they locked the lock and rode away."
So the whole thing was a setup. Wayne turns out to be from Kansas, working with the drug enforcement agency, working in Indonesia to discourage tourists from trying to smuggle heroin out of the island. Ratri was hired to play a part with Sage. Sage is taken down in the airport when he returns to Bali, and is imprisoned in Karibokan jail.
Wayne comes to see him there, and tells him the truth.
The author's successful and extremely realistic evocation of the huge amount of nervousness and stress that a smuggler would feel trying to smuggle diamonds or drugs through an airport and the customs was what redeemed this book, from the two stars I would have given it for the triggering sex scenes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 17, 2020
"He was no one. Just another sucker with a good job and a mortgage, who thought he was living the dream until he lost it. Now he was a survivor, by default, looking for some beauty in the world." — Matthew McBride, END OF THE OCEAN
"I just wanted to get away, man. I didn't plan anything, I didn't care. I thought I'd come to Bali, drink until my money ran out. I never thought I'd meet someone like her." — Sage in END OF THE OCEAN
Sage is running away from heartbreak and loss in America, and unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, he found out that there are far worse things that can happen to you in Bali than urinary tract infections. Like any number of washed-up Americans who washed up on far-flung foreign shores in literature, Sage is underfinanced, underemployed and under-concerned about anything beyond the next available distraction. When his body and heart find more, he decides he can't leave this crowded, fuming island paradise even as his tourist visa is about to expire.
In other words, he's the perfect mark for those who are looking for someone to smuggle diamonds or drugs into Bali. Which is in Indonesia, which gives the death penalty to drug smugglers. The perfect mark for those who seem to have sure ways to get around the safeguards against smugglers, but their shaded eyes tell lies he can't quite see. Or maybe he's still figuring out what he's willing to see clearly, and what he's willing to see past.
Part leisurely low-rent literary travelogue, part existential tour guide to a Lost Weekend in the finest Literary Male tradition — think ON THE ROAD, THE QUIET AMERICAN, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and the Ben Gazzara film SAINT JACK, among others — END OF THE OCEAN larders garish color onto of a grim, grinding appointment with high-stakes fate in a way that's as impossible to look away from as it is for Sage not to enter the airport, knowing that he may never walk out of it again a free man. However you think that's going to go, you'd think wrong, and not having any idea how things would turn out is only one of the many pleasures of this fine literary thriller. Think of a young Anthony Bourdain in his itinerant line-cook days, short of money and short of care, stumbling into a noodle joint in Bali and seeing what happens when people catch sight of an American whose weary face and grainy eyes and twitchy fingers says his options are wide open.
END OF THE OCEAN achieves that most enviable of balances — it takes its time telling a story of people and place while never letting any slack on the surgical tube of stretched suspense — just as Matthew McBride did in his previous novel, the Missouri-set SWOLLEN RED SUN. Nobody knows modern American male desperation, distraction, destitution and darkness like Matthew McBride.
"I just wanted to get away, man. I didn't plan anything, I didn't care. I thought I'd come to Bali, drink until my money ran out. I never thought I'd meet someone like her." — Sage in END OF THE OCEAN
Sage is running away from heartbreak and loss in America, and unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, he found out that there are far worse things that can happen to you in Bali than urinary tract infections. Like any number of washed-up Americans who washed up on far-flung foreign shores in literature, Sage is underfinanced, underemployed and under-concerned about anything beyond the next available distraction. When his body and heart find more, he decides he can't leave this crowded, fuming island paradise even as his tourist visa is about to expire.
In other words, he's the perfect mark for those who are looking for someone to smuggle diamonds or drugs into Bali. Which is in Indonesia, which gives the death penalty to drug smugglers. The perfect mark for those who seem to have sure ways to get around the safeguards against smugglers, but their shaded eyes tell lies he can't quite see. Or maybe he's still figuring out what he's willing to see clearly, and what he's willing to see past.
Part leisurely low-rent literary travelogue, part existential tour guide to a Lost Weekend in the finest Literary Male tradition — think ON THE ROAD, THE QUIET AMERICAN, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and the Ben Gazzara film SAINT JACK, among others — END OF THE OCEAN larders garish color onto of a grim, grinding appointment with high-stakes fate in a way that's as impossible to look away from as it is for Sage not to enter the airport, knowing that he may never walk out of it again a free man. However you think that's going to go, you'd think wrong, and not having any idea how things would turn out is only one of the many pleasures of this fine literary thriller. Think of a young Anthony Bourdain in his itinerant line-cook days, short of money and short of care, stumbling into a noodle joint in Bali and seeing what happens when people catch sight of an American whose weary face and grainy eyes and twitchy fingers says his options are wide open.
END OF THE OCEAN achieves that most enviable of balances — it takes its time telling a story of people and place while never letting any slack on the surgical tube of stretched suspense — just as Matthew McBride did in his previous novel, the Missouri-set SWOLLEN RED SUN. Nobody knows modern American male desperation, distraction, destitution and darkness like Matthew McBride.
September 20, 2019
Excellent. Hits all those notes that makes a classic sing, BUT it's not weighed down with stereotypes and tropes. It's got everything: a stranger in a strange land, a genuine love interest, and the stakes are HIGH, but somehow McBride makes it seem effortless, like all those perfect ingredients happened by accident. It's got everything it needs to be an at-the-beach bestseller, yet it still holds all the credibility of a roman-à-clef told by a seasoned world-travelling criminal. McBride has skills. The kind of skill you'll never notice because you're busy swimming in the story.
March 28, 2025
The story follows MMC Sage, a newly divorced man who takes a trip to Bali to try and escape his problems and have a little fun until his money runs out.
For the first 50% of the book the author really takes their time setting the stage and developing the characters. I'd definitely describe it as a slow burn, however you will be rewarded with some fabulous twists and turns.
Whilst romance isn't the main storyline there is a nice little relationship that does develop, which gives our MMC a little more direction and helps push the story along.
I like how the author gives us a good insight with Sage, at how regular everyday people can end up in situations they never wanted to, or expected to be in.
For the first 50% of the book the author really takes their time setting the stage and developing the characters. I'd definitely describe it as a slow burn, however you will be rewarded with some fabulous twists and turns.
Whilst romance isn't the main storyline there is a nice little relationship that does develop, which gives our MMC a little more direction and helps push the story along.
I like how the author gives us a good insight with Sage, at how regular everyday people can end up in situations they never wanted to, or expected to be in.
January 25, 2021
2.5 that at least to me, doesn't deserve to be rounded up. This book read like an old-school detective novel, but none of the characters are detectives. It just has that feel to it, and I have no idea whether that's intentional or not. Much of what was going on was obvious despite not being overtly stated anywhere, lots of mindless sex/sexual activity, drinking, fast driving and drugs.
If this were a series, I would not continue on with the next book. I won't seek out other books by this author, but I would be willing to give McBride a 2nd chance if I come across something that sounds like it could be really good.
If this were a series, I would not continue on with the next book. I won't seek out other books by this author, but I would be willing to give McBride a 2nd chance if I come across something that sounds like it could be really good.
July 12, 2019
A wild story. A good follow up after Swollen Red Sun. It was interesting learning a few facts about Indonesia. Death penalty for drugs, but mushrooms are OK? I loved the plot twist, did not see that coming!! I enjoyed the audio while driving, because the guy had a great talent for doing voices. Great reader. Keith Szarabajka.
March 31, 2025
I thought it would be a good emotional novel laced with criminal activities and crime world but it turned out very slow, non progressive dull writing. The description of the meeting with islanders was written in very old style, the writing feels orthodox type, sorry to say I couldn't continue it.
And this became my third disappointing book of 2025.
And this became my third disappointing book of 2025.
July 28, 2019
Running to start a new life in Bali to get mixed up in all the bad shit this beautiful place has to offer.
October 12, 2019
Hear the complete review on our website: https://bookedpodcast.podbean.com/e/4...
January 26, 2021
DNF. Gave up at 62%.
January 11, 2020
Hard to put down
This story caught me off guard with an ending that was worth the wait. I finished it in 2 days, not being able to fall asleep because i would just keep reading. Knowing where the Author was from I loved seeing pieces of him within this writing. So far there has not been a book written by McBride that I have not thoroughly enjoyed. Can not wait for the next one.
This story caught me off guard with an ending that was worth the wait. I finished it in 2 days, not being able to fall asleep because i would just keep reading. Knowing where the Author was from I loved seeing pieces of him within this writing. So far there has not been a book written by McBride that I have not thoroughly enjoyed. Can not wait for the next one.
February 8, 2020
An interesting story, but ended up leaving me flat. The author seems to ramble, never really developing his characters. This book also suffered from some rather shoddy editing which was annoying and distracting.
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