On the Beach by Nevil Shute Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of On the Beach
Book Review: A must-read book
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: A superb story, well told and riveting
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read the other reviews. First It is scientifically accurate based on verifitcation from my physicist husband. Second cutting a 120 pages, would leave you with what? Third boring? I read the story in two days, gave up a weekend, and I don't do that anymore. Now, if you read this YOU MUST read Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars collection, particularly the last story, Death in A Cage, which covers this book also. I came upon it surrendipitiously but now I recommend it highly as a great one two punch. Now to On the Beach. I did not know what the storyline was, except my husband recommended it and referred to it often. I was stunned and shocked to find out in Chapter 1 that there had been a Nuclear War started by small powers -- not China, Russia, USA but little one's like Albania in the story or Iraq, now... The spoiled child who if he can't win no one does... I find this plausible. It is well told and romantic -- very romantic and yet...If the bombs get dropped, Shute is right, it goes this way....Book Review: A troubling apocalyptic nightmare
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not a post-nuclear adventure book-- nothing here for Mad Max or giant mutant rat fans. It is not even an up-to-date reading of what post-nuclear earth would look like; much more recent scientific speculation contradicts some of the picture here.But it does give you what Shute does best-- ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. What would you do if you knew that you, and every other human around you, were about to relentlessly, unavoidably, painfully die? This is a powerful haunting hopeless book, but for my money the most realistically frightening picture of the end of human life ever set on the page.
Book Review: A trult memorable reading experience
Summary: 5 Stars
Nevil Shute wrote "On the Beach" at a time when the world's two superpowers--both in the northern hemisphere--were glaring at each other pugnaciously, waving their "city killer" bombs, and bragging about "Mutually Assured Destruction" as their best insurance against nuclear war.
Nevil Shute simply picked up that ball and ran with it. He assumed that the strategy had failed, and that the war had been waged, and the northern hemisphere had been destroyed by a combination of atomic blast and the nuclear clouds that emanated from those blasts.
Australia, though, in the southern hemisphere--being a non-combatant--had come out unscathed in the war, and because of Coriolis force, was thus far not affected by the nuclear clouds of death. Coriolis force is that force which is created by the revolution of the earth on its axis which causes water draining in northern hemisphere sinks to circulate clockwise, while that in the southern hemisphere does so counter-clockwise. However, since there is a co-mingling of winds at the equator, the southern hemisphere was predictably doomed, and the folks who lived there knew it.
The story is about the reaction of the doomed people in Australia, and their reaction to the awful knowledge of their impending deaths, and how they handled it. The protagonist, Dwight Towers, is a U.S. nuclear submarine commander who, with his crew and boat, are in Australia. There he meets Moira Davidson and they fall in love.
Some of the throat-catching moments are when the American sub travels to the United States, and the silent streets on San Francisco are described. In the movie version, it was Seattle, and one of the sailors--a former resident of the Seattle area--leaves the ship to go home, a futile gesture, of course.
The story describes the various emotions of those facing certain death from nuclear radiation. The death of the entire human race; inescapable, inexorable death, and how they handled it. Bitterness, of course, and recklessness (What can they do, kill me?) as well as foolhardy acts of courage (What? I might be killed?).
This is a thought-provoking book. Only the shallow will describe it as "out of date." One of the truly memorable reading experiences of my life. The movie is also fascinating.
Joseph Pierre, USN (Ret)
Book Review: A very interesting and possible take on a nuclear apocalypse
Summary: 3 Stars
This novel gives a very possible, and frighteningly probable, view of the way things could easily end up, as small and unstable countries enter the growing club of nuclear armament. The most eery (yet unfortunately difficult to swallow) aspect of the book is the refusal by many of the supposedly intelligent characters to truly absorb the reality of the situation. Bit by bit, over the space of a couple of years, radiation is slowly drifting across the equator from the heavily bombed, destroyed, and radioactive northern continents, to invade and kill the southern half of the globe in turn. But people continue to plan for the future, and act as though that future will come.Unfortunately, the characters are so 2-dimensional, and act such trite and ordinary roles, that they failed to come alive for me. I never could quite believe in their reactions, either. That they could so fully split their consciousness of the approaching radiation from the actions of their daily life boggled my mind, and blew my suspension of disbelief.
Sorry. Great concept, unconvincingly executed.