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Summary: The most compelling book ever on nuclear war and humankind.
Review: Forty years after its publication, "On the Beach" remains the most compelling book ever written on nuclear war and humankind. Not a "technothriller", it offers only a stark contrast between human indencency and decency in the quiet chronicle of the end of our existence, as the radioactive aftermath of nuclear war spreads inexorably from the warring countries to the remainder of the globe, reaching the last survivors of humanity in southern Australia. The struggle to face dispair without embracing it gives this book a power and depth seldom found in modern fiction. For anyone who has lived through the "cold war", and for anyone who has not, "On the Beach" is a book you must read. Its relevance is perhaps greater today than when written, for the spectre of nuclear madness, although more plausible than ever before in the face of almost uncontrolled proliferation, is less
believed than at any time past. Nevil Shute's masterwork will disturb your complacency.
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Summary: An interesting vision of the end of life as we know it.
Review: Nevil Shute gives us the unique opportunity to be a fly on the wall of a community that has the distinction of being the last community left on earth. How or why that community comes to this distinction is nowhere near as important as how it deals with that distinction. On the Beach is a tour de force of emotions and feelings felt by realistic characters as the last six months of human life on earth is played out in a large Australian city; that because of its southern location has managed to survive a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Now it must face what the rest of the world has already experienced. The inescapable radiation that is drifting down from the already dead northern hemisphere. The story, although science fiction, is of the individuals that must come to grips with who they were, who they are now, and what they will do, now that the end is almost inevitable.
Mr. Shute is very good at weaving a story even though it was more plausable when it was written over thirty years ago. But his real genius lies in the timeless account of the many individuals we are introduced to, and are slowly dying with. There is no real pain, only that which we each create as we live and eventually face death. This community is a mirror we see ourselves in, and the view may be eye opening indeed, for we are not out from under the nuclear dragon yet. A timeless tale.
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Summary: I liked it
Review: It was an interesting story about a fictional war. It made me cry. I liked it though
Rating:
Summary: A must-read book
Review: This book, written in 1957, has not lost any of its shocking power.
It tells the tale of a diverse, doomed group of people in Australia, after a nuclear war leaves them in the only safe place in the world. They know they are to die soon, and how each person copes with the situation is the core of the story.
How mankind got to this place in history is also explored, and the quote from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" (used on the title page) is right on the mark:
"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river..."
"This is the way the world ends--
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
Powerful stuff. A must-read book.
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Summary: What could have been...
Review: This is an interesting book, but for some reason, I find it hard to classify, and can't quite pin down why. Please bear with me.
When reading this book, keep in mind that it was written almost 50 years ago. Social attitudes change over time, even during brief periods. For this reason, some people may find the character's behaviour odd.
The book was also written shortly before the Cuban missile crisis. The tensions which led to the crisis were already in development, and the Cuban missile crisis was the boiling point for those tensions.
The author takes those tensions into a world where diplomacy failed. I don't want to re-hash what many other reviewers have already discussed, but the novel is set in Australia about a year after "the war". Most of the details about the war are sketchy at best, altho the characters do have a general idea of what occured. What does occur is that a few of the characters are suffering from terrible rage against the powers which waged the war, in which they had no part, but for which all of humanity suffers.
The novel details the final months of a group of people who are simply waiting for time to run out. Some have commented on the inanity of carrying on with daily life, especially since life (as they know it) will simply cease within a year. I don't think that is too far fetched. Even recent events show that in times of disaster, many people realize that the best thing to do is try to carry on as best as they could.
Commerce and goverment are still operating, but as the novel winds to the sad end, so do these institutions, as well as all the rest...
It's a sad interpetation of what could have happened. I also think it's a valid book to read, even long after the end of the Cold War. For me, those most haunting images are those of a submarine slowly sailing past cities which survived the blast, but which eventually fell to radiation poisioning.
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Summary: Cold War Reality Check
Review: Despite its rather benign title, this novel will shock the reader with the opening chapter, outlining the causes and consequences of a global thermonuclear war. "Total War" is something that hardly crosses our mind as modern Americans these days, but in 1957 it was a very real fear, and a very real possibility. This novel is an extension of those fears and provides a warning as well. The story is set in Melbourne, Australia, and the basic premise is quite grim. The entire Northern hemisphere has been ultimately destroyed in a massive nuclear exchange. Great, well how does this affect the peaceful residents of Melbourne, the southernmost populous city on the continent? As a result of the war nuclear winds, massive storms laden with fallout haven begun to circle the earth and wind their way south. These storms will bring an inevitable end to all human life on earth, presumably all life period. The most touching aspect of this novel is that every character knows their demise is soon to come, but they accept the hand they were dealt (a rather shoddy one considering they had nothing to do with the war) with dignity and await their doom living out their daily lives in peace.
This story is a very grim reality check and certainly a worthwhile read. The dialogue has a tendency to be fairly formulaic and contrived at some points; however the climax of the story is quite suspenseful. Overall a very good read, anyone with an affinity for political or global thrillers would enjoy this peek into the absurdity of the of the cold war, as written by one who lived through it.
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Summary: Facing the End of the World
Review: Shute's 1957 best seller about the grim danger of nuclear war which stalks man's very existence will shake up the most complacent reader. Written during the Cold War, it is a stirring plea for sanity among governmental superpowers, for they alone have the dreaded capability to actually destroy the world. Yet the plot develops with sincere concern for the Human aspect of this horrific catastrophe. Starkly chilling the story chronicles the last six months of Life on our planet for the people living and stationed in Australia-the southernmost section, near Melbourne. By the time the novel opens, nuclear war has wiped out human life in the entire Northern Hemisphere; it is just a matter of time before global winds shift patterns to carry the radioactive cobalt particles into the Southern Hemisphere. Annihilation by gradual but inexorable Contamination, which is our own fault!.
How humanity copes with impending and inevitable death make a sobering tale; each character demonstrates his/her own foibles, suffers denial phases, and invents ways to deal with the end-not only of their own lives, but all human kind on the planet. Readers will mourn not just the character whom we come to care about, but also the needless and painful fate of man. The animals would survive longer, but eventually succumb to the poisoned air, water and vegetation. By the time Earth would again be habitable (20 years hence) there would be no humans alive to enjoy or revive it. Not because of an alien invasion or an act of God, but because of our own arrogant and bellicose stupidity.
Dwight Towers is the highest ranking US Naval officer, currently commanding one of the last two submarines; still considering himself married and a family man, he does everything by the book-Navy to the end. Australia has ordered native Peter Holmes to serve as Liaison Officer for Dwight as the ship explores, with great circumspection, the remains of the deserted US and other coastal area which have gone silent. Peter's wife, Mary, is concerned mainly about their little house in the country and their young baby. Her girlfriend, Moira, is invited to a party to help keep Dwight occupied; seems it's difficult for Northern Hemisphere types to keep their cool in Australia, where life still maintains some degree of normalcy. John Osborne is a scientist assigned to check the levels of radiation during the two-month recon cruise, though he would much prefer to enjoy his private pride--a Ferrari--while he sill can. One by one our friends succumb to death by radiation sickness--many opting to take a cyanide pill calmly in their favorite settings. One of which proves to be on the beach.
This terrifying cautionary tale reveals man's futile attempts to salvage the future which he unthinkingly destroyed;
the dark plot development focuses on the last efforts of humanity to preserve the dignity of the species and its once bright accomplishments.
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Summary: A Haunting Idea poorly executed
Review: This novel was a big disappointment to me. I had expected something rather better written, however the characters are cardboard, the dialogue is wooden, and it reminded me of a shooting script for a TV soap. The redeeming feature is not the plot line (which I thought was absurd) but the background scenario, the condition precedent for the story.
**SOME SPOILERS** The background is that a nuclear war has taken place, and has engulfed the entire northern hemisphere. Everyone there is dead. The southern hemisphere survivors await the clouds of radioactive and toxic fallout to arrive and kill them too. I find this an intriguing idea.
But that is as far as it goes. We are supposed to believe that, in the small Australian town described, people remained well-behaved and civilised, there was no looting rape or assault, people still showed up to work, and property continues to change hands in exchange for money. Well, something tells me it wouldn't be like that. Also, the dialogue is so corny that the characters are never clearly drawn. Overall, it's a thumbs-down from me.
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Summary: Great Book...VERY Depressing
Review: A great, simple book very well written and poignant. What's interesting about it is that as we enter the story, the nuclear war that will eventually doom the characters in the story has already occurred and is over. They are simply awaiting the lethal radioactive cloud to move down to the southern hemisphere and begin to kill everyone off. The people carry on their daily lives as if nothing has happened. But we see in several key scenes early in the book how painfully, heartbreakingly aware they really are. And that's the key power to the story. These people know they're doomed but what choice do they have except to continue on with their lives. The most painful scene I found in the book was how the young couple with the baby begin to plan out their garden for the next year knowing full well that they are not going to be around to see it. They're fooling themselves, obviously, but how else to cope with the inevitable.In the end, the book has the same effect as a movie called "Testament" with Jane Alexander. You'll be depressed and feeling a little scared and hopeless. This is not light reading.
Rating:
Summary: Spooky, eminently readable book
Review: I'd heard about this book for years; finally got 'round to reading it. A year or so after a nuclear war, fought entirely in the Northern Hemisphere, folks on the southeast coast of Australia await their fate: a radioactive wind carried around the earth. Shute was not writing high art here: @times it sounds almost like reportage, but he manages to maintain a modicum of suspense throughout the novel by placing his characters in semi-routine situations that are always circumscribed by their finality: this is the last time we will ever... A bland scientist cuts loose in an annual auto race; a couple spends their last hours together fishing in the mountains; another couple landscapes their yard until they're too weak to stand. The exchange betw. the submarine captain & the escaped crewman Swain is frighteningly unbearable in its blandness: "I know how you feel, sailor," sighs CDR Towers, as Swain chugs across the sub's path in a motor boat, just off the coast of his deserted hometown in Washington State. On the Beach was a super-quick read: the messages were not hidden but revealed in conversations among the characters. If we had the chance, would we do anything differently? Has anybody recorded a history of this? The book end with the inevitable, the deaths of all the characters, & it just doesn't matter whether people survive in Tasmania or New Zealand, for their deaths won't be long in coming.
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