Rating: 
Summary: Depressing, but Moving
Review: The end of the world is coming.
The madness of nuclear war has consumed the Northern hemisphere and the ensuing radiation is seeping south to destroy Australia. The population attempt to deal with certain death in a variety of ways. Some deny it,drowning themselves in drink. Others live their lives to the fullest before the end. This book is a chronicle of how it could have been. The threat of total global destruction may be less now that the cold war is "over", but the threat of nuclear disaster is still present, if only on a smaller scale.
Rating: 
Summary: Like A Bath For the Soul
Review: This book is not for those of the action-packed "post-apocalyptic" genre. This is for those of us who like to think "what if" for more than mere entertainment. You won't find bullet-riddled car chases or fights, and only the barest mention of revelry. There's no sex. No real violence (save some auto racing). Nobody even seems to raise their voice that much.Perhaps that's why this book is so creepy. The ordinary, undramatic drama of living with the knowledge of impending death. People deal with this all the time, but rarely en masse -- cancer victims, AIDS sufferers, etc. In fact, our culture has tried very hard to erase the thought of death from our minds; it is deemed "inaccessible" to the plebean masses, something relegated to goths and the morbidly depressed. Truth is, we need shots of this in our society like we need polio vaccines. Ironically, our stress-induced illnesses, which bring death sooner, could be greatly alleviated if we stopped running from the idea that we're going to die. In a way, this book is an "Ecclesiastes" for the layperson and non-believer alike: it's a wake up call, reminding us each "you're going to die; so what are you going to do about it till then?" The difference is, in this book, they know WHEN it's going to happen. A mixed blessing, to say the least, but one we can benefit from if we will just swallow that bitter pill (no in-joke intended here). As an anxiety-prone perfectionist high-achiever, I *need* books like this to scrub off the worry and preoccupation and guilt over personal failures. I *need* to be reminded that life is about more than achievement - we all live as if our careers, social status, accomplishments, and expectations are the reason for living. But if we knew we were shortly to die, how much would those things matter? How much anxiety would just drop off of us if life became about more than achievement and distraction, about more than frenzied activity and chemical relaxants? Books such as this, while not giving us complete answers, do help to point the way.
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly realistic
Review: Could very will be an accurate prediction of what will happen. Gets a person to thinking about the choices made today.
Rating:
Summary: What could have been
Review: In my opinion, this book is, today, wrongly classified as "science fiction". Being written in 1957, and a product of an incipient Cold War, maybe it was science fiction back in the fifties, but now "On the beach" is more like "apocalyptic fiction". The story is about what could have happened if the northern countries decided to strike nuclear attacks on each other in 1961. Two years later, the whole upper part of the globe has fallen under the radioative cloud, ant there's no one left. Because of the wind patterns, this dooming cloud is slowly reaching southern countries like Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Dwight Towers is the commander of one of the two remaining submarines existent in the US Navy, now based on Melbourne. There, he meets Moira Davidson, a young alcoholic woman, and her two friends, Australian navy-man Peter Holmes and his wife, Mary, and they have to cope with, literally, the end of the world. "On the beach" is not an action book, and it's not about heroic achievements to save what remains of Earth. This is a book of sorrow and regret. Nevil Shute's characters can be divided between those who have accepted their terrible fate, and those who will deny it until the end. That's what is most interesting, and most depressive too. Not a long book, "On the beach" seems to drag on for the first three-quarters, only setting a gray but necessary background, but the final chapters are like the water running down the drain in an emptying sink: twisty, fast-paced and hypnotic. Yes, hypnotic is a good word. The reader will keep reading, trying himself to look for ways out, only to discover that sometimes reality is more powerful than imagination. "On the beach" is sad all the way. In fact, the title alone is very depressive, once the reader understand its meaning, disclosed on a poem in the first page, and in the very last line. But it is also a powerful reading, one that will stick to the reader's mind after the book is finished. And, after all, this surely could have happened; in fact, Nevil Shute could have been a prophet. We all have to be grateful that he wasn't. Grade 8.8/10
Rating:
Summary: Shatteringly powerful
Review: The question of what one would do if the world were coming to an end is the premise of Nevil Shute's 1957 novel "On the Beach." Despite being half a century old, the novel is powerful and timeless in its portrayal of the narrow tightrope we have walked ever since the first nuclear explosion lit up the skies over New Mexico on that morning in July 1945. Two years have passed since an all-out nuclear war destroyed Earth's northern hemisphere, and people remain alive only in the southern hemisphere, particularly in Australia, where the story takes place. But not for long, as global weather patterns are slowly but steadily blowing the lethal fallout southwards and radiation counts are inching higher. As the unavoidable doom grows closer, people react in various ways. One family, the wife in deep denial, goes about planting next year's flowerbeds and charting their infant daughter's future. A young woman finds solace in endless bottles of alcohol. A respected scientist realizes his dream of becoming a racecar driver. An American naval officer whose family was killed during the war takes refuge in military discipline and protocol. And the government quietly manufactures instant-death suicide pills for when the coming radiation sickness becomes too painful to further withstand. When the novel was originally published, the hydrogen bomb was a recent invention and we were told how recovery from an atomic war merely involved putting brick back on top of brick. When I first read it in the early 1980s, the Americans and the Soviets routinely threatened each other with obliteration and films like "The Day After" and "Threads" seared our collective consciousness with images of what life could be like after a nuclear war. Today, nations are invaded for allegedly preparing to build nuclear weapons by other nations who then turn around and plan a new generation of nuclear weapons for their own use. But in Shute's vision, there is no rebuilding, no "after." There is only the impending human extinction. Plausible? Possibly. Bleak? Certainly. But the book takes such an inexorable approach to its subject that the inevitable moment of The End leaves one shattered and drained. "On the Beach" is a powerful read, one that should be required for anyone who believes that a nuclear war can be fought and won, that any nation's security depends on the ability to not just defeat but utterly annihilate a real or potential adversary, that our freedom somehow depends on our remaining underneath a sword of Damocles composed of ever more numerous and terrifying weapons.
Rating:
Summary: Bone-chilling, devestatingly lucid work
Review: I must admit, that at first I wasn't overly intrigued by this book, its now well, well-worn premise of post-nuclear holocaust being over-familiar and perhaps a bit tired in my mind (regardless of the fact that this was a pioneer book in the genre), and having read 'Canticle for Leibowitz,' an excellent book, I indeed had limited expectations. And the book does start out slowly enough, with a sunny day in Australia sometime after a far-off, disasterous nuclear war and a naval officer, with a wife and baby at home, learning of a new job for him from the Australian navy. Shute spends lots of time preparing our setting and elucidating his characters, rolling everything out in what seems at first languid fashion but his is a style that does start to draw you in. What was so fascinating about the book however, is not necessarily the premise of the "world after a nuclear war" but the human element- we learn along the way, maybe halfway through, that at least 4700 nuclear weapons were detonated across the world- and in equally casual fashion we learn that the radioactive wind currents of certain and painful death are slowly descending upon Melbourne. The reader becomes aware of this almost, it seems, in conjunction with the characters, which through the course of the book take on a really vivid aura, which helps make this so depressing and so incredibly powerful. We see people in utter denial, even in the end, that it can happen to them, people who drink and party any threat of reality away, people who stick to principles, and so on and so on, all the while there is never any doubt that death is coming, and soon. Truly a bone-chilling account, perhaps one of the most ominously powerful books I have ever read, whose incredible strength grows as you read along, probably reaching its peak and staying there about two-thirds of the way through. One of few books that has the power to depress and unnerve so well, and one of the few books that has the power to hook its reader so well.
Rating:
Summary: Applicable in Any Time
Review: It took me 60 pages to realize this book had been written over forty years ago; and then, only at the casual mention of a date. I found just about every issue in this book to be one of today also. The threat of nuclear weapons, wars in far away countries, and the viewpoints of the people. This book is timeless, and will continue to be so until nuclear weapons are completely lost or we blow ourselves up. The characters seemed very real. Their reactions to the forcasted time when radiation sickness was to strike were varied and extremely interesting. I was especially intrigued by the widespread instinct towards something like conscious denial, i.e. the planting of gardens for the following spring and such. I found the basic tone of this book to be similar to 1984, though not focused on the government, simply civilians in post-nuclear conditions. Anyway, the basic story line is that the northern hemisphere was is mostly void of any live whatsoever from a complicated nuclear war and the south (focusing on Australia here) is slowly catching the radiation. The time left to live is able to be forcasted approximately. Mostly, people tend to stay in their homes and the strict rules of society break down.
Rating:
Summary: a great classic
Review: Nevil Shute's classic book 'On the Beach' looks at the end of the world from a different angle--a nuclear war has raged in the Northern Hemisphere, over in a month, but because of the winds the radiation is slowly covering the Southern Hemisphere, none of which were involved in the war. It's the story of the last days on Earth as experienced by the innocent Australians. It is a sad book, down to the core. And you will find tears welling in your eyes as the characters of the novel attempt to deal with their upcoming fate. It's a story of love, hope, redemption, sorrow, and peace. this is one of the greatest books I've ever read. I highly, highly recommend it to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing book for reflection on realities of the nuclear age
Review: I have read this book twice, first when I was twelve years old and then again recently at the age of twenty-seven. After fifteen years of reflection, I remembered this book both fondly and fearfully - fondly for the quality of its writing and the importance of its message and fearfully for the horrible picture it presents of one of many virtually unthinkable scenarios of the nuclear age. So I read it again and experienced a renewal of the same sense of awakening to the frightening world that we live in. Although the specific course of events depicted in this book is unlikely to ever occur in the real world, the story does present characters with the sorts of personal struggles that would likely face millions in the event of a widespread modern use of nuclear weapons. For example, the sense of helplessness experienced by the characters is a particularly moving theme that may inspire readers to greater political participation and interest in international affairs. In short, I think this is an important book, particularly for young adults whose views of the world and of their responsibilities in it are not yet as fixed as those of older generations.
Rating: 
Summary: Not So Good
Review: What would you do if you knew you had only seven or eight months to live? What exciting dreams would you want to live out before your last days? Who would you want to live them out with? How would you tell everyone you loved goodbye? These are only a few of the questions that are proposed by Nevil Shute's On the Beach. On the Beach is a persons depiction of how a society would act if they knew that a radioactive death cloud was coming to consume their lives. It shows the struggles that a group of friends have in dealing with the death of their nearest loved ones along with their own.
One of my criticisms is the characters in this book. The characters were remarkably calm and orderly. Shute describes his character in great detail. Shute uses all the methods of indirect characterization. When Peter and Mary are talking about garden plans for next summer despite the fact that they will die in a few months (speech); peter thinking to himself that he should pull the tree out of the ground for next years crops (thought); Peter actually pulling the tree out of the ground (action); Peter getting in his best suit to take the pill that will end his life (appearance); and the fact that everyone assumed that Peter would stay by his Navy ship's side because it was the honorable thing to do (reputation) all characterize Peter as a calm and orderly guy. In fact, every character mentioned in this book is calm and orderly. It's not how Shute characterized his characters that I dislike but, It's what he characterizes them like. There were behind-the-scenes comments on drunkenness and fights in the streets, but this was reported rather than seen, and always in disapproving tones. Perhaps middle-class Australian people (and American Submarine Captains) really did behave like that, but from what I've read of people's (especially sexual) during World War Two, I doubt it. Also, I found the lack of any attempt by society as a whole to survive rather strange. Knowing for over a year that the radioactive dust was on its way, there seems to have been no attempt to build a bunker or any other way of surviving. I began reading this book by grabbing it when I was off to my room to go to bed. I would sit there and read until I felt ready to sleep. This worked well because for the first 3/5ths of the book there was no action. I could be rest assured that if I wanted to go to sleep, five minutes of reading this book would do the trick. The problem laid in its plot. A normal plotline has the conflict at the beginning and then a rising action. Just when the rising action conflict is about to be resolved, other conflicts arise and lead to a climax. The climax is the heart of the plot you could say. The story is very downhill after this point and it is mostly a resolution. An extended 'And they lived happily ever after' if you will. This type of plot line when charted out makes a pyramid shape on paper. Rises to climax and falls to resolution. Imagine for a moment looking at a plot line that is not a pyramid at all but a descending ramp. The highest point at the beginning and as you read on the ramp loses altitude and gets lower and lower with every turn of the page with nothing but a few bumps and divots hardly worth mentioning to slow your descent. Well, that is the plot line of this book. Within the first few pages it tells you that a nuclear war has happened and by the end of the book everyone would be dead. Then you slowly go down the declining plot line watching people scurry and fulfill life long dreams until the inevitable point where life ceases to exist. I find this kind of plot line very boring. You can tell it's not a normal plot within the first few pages. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but usually when an author makes a book about daring subjects such as death, there is a twist to the plot, you expect something good. To my surprise there were no twists, no surprises besides how physically hard it was to stay interested. All in all the plot was a major disappointment. Despite my criticisms, the novel does have some interesting points, like that of how he predicts what would happen in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Overall, On The Beach is not a bad novel, but it is not a good one as I have shown you with numerous evidence, I wouldn't say that Shute is a good author either. The novel has an interesting idea, but its unbelievable character are disappointing. It's an easy read, word choice is easy and story line is easy to understand. If you like action, twists, or books that keep you guessing up to the very end then this book probably isn't for you. If you are interested in the effects of a nuclear war, or you like romance, then you might enjoy this book.
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