I own a hand-me-down book of 'On the Beach'. Read it three times over forty-five years. I really don't need to read it a fourth time, BUT, seeing as how Donald Trump is surreal, and completely off his rocker .. maybe I'll have .. time for a refresh before the 'Apprentice' kills us all
But first ..Time for a refresh. A Wikipedia basic
On the Beach is an apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war some years previous. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently. Shute's initial story was published as a four-part series, The Last Days on Earth, in the London weekly periodical Sunday Graphic, in April 1957. For the novel, Shute expanded the storyline.[4] The story has been adapted twice as a film (in 1959 and 2000) and once as a BBC radio broadcast in 2008.
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Disturbing apocalyptic vision still delivers chills. Extended
review: Like a number of other novels of Nevil Shute, On the Beach is a
moving tale of ordinary people jolted out of the normal course of their
lives and into something--this particular something very dark and
troubling--that they must somehow face and cope with. Here, the Northern
Hemisphere has been obliterated (read more)
Review by Meredy
(LibraryThing), September 5, 2015
On
the Beach by Nevil Shute tells the story of the last month’s in the
lives of the last people on earth, and although slightly dated, still
makes chills run up and down my spine. Nuclear war has come and gone,
there is no one left alive in the earth’s northern hemisphere and clouds
of radiation are slowing flowing south. From the very beginning of the
book, the people know that their (read more)
Review by DeltaQueen50
(LibraryThing), February 6, 2015
This
was a classic. The operative word here is was. My understanding is that
this was a ground breaker in the 50’s, including a fairly well-received
movie. But now, we are in different times. The understated continuation
of life with the foregone conclusion of death by radiation sickness was
probably quite compelling in the A-bomb paranoia that existed in the
50’s. (I can attest for part (read more)
Review by figre
(LibraryThing), April 22, 2007
In
his book Rumors of War and Infernal Machines, Charles Gannon argues
that "the discourse of nuclear literature has traditionally relied upon
images because a personally meaningful quantitative assessment of the
bomb’s annihilator powers is impossible. Its size dwarfs and makes mute
any discursive attempt to establish a connection between individual
experience and the overwhelming total (read more)
Review by Stevil2001 (LibraryThing), March 31, 2017
A
gloomy picture of the final weeks of human life after a global nuclear
catastrophe; as someone who is barely old enough to remember the Cold
War, I found it fascinating to read about this situation of which people
at the time must have been genuinely afraid. Shute's writing is
enthralling, his attention to detail a delight to read. The characters
are well-formed and the plot is intriguing. (read more)
Review by pokarekareana
(LibraryThing), August 24, 2010
A
harrowing book detailing the end of the world. Muted, subdued and
chilling. This book will depress and sadden you, but will leave you with
some hope that we haven't reached this far yet. Don't read this on the
train if you're an emotional softie like me, I barely held back the
tears at the end.
Review by MikePearce
(LibraryThing), September 10, 2010
There
has been a war. Short in length, but devastating for the Northern
Hemisphere. No one in Australia really knows what happened during those
days, but they know one thing. Nuclear bombs were dropped, and now
everyone up there seems to be dead. And the radiation is spreading.
Slowly but surely its coming closer, and there is nothing anyone can do
to stop it. Peter is posted to a submarine (read more)
Review by lunacat
(LibraryThing), October 10, 2009
The
northern hemisphere has obliterated itself in nuclear warfare. In
Australia, humanity continues to exist, at least for a time. In six
months the radiation cloud will reach them as well. The book follows
very different people as the end nears: the American submarine commander
Towers; Moira, who drowns herself in drink and parties; Peter and Mary,
working on their garden and worrying (read more)
Review by ladycato
(LibraryThing), June 28, 2009
A book I have returned to throughout my life. The sadness envelops me as if wrapped in a comforting blanket
Review by BookMarkMe
(LibraryThing), May 26, 2009
Dated but interesting.
Review by LewisZ
(LibraryThing), February 17, 2025
Nevil
Shute was an Englishman who left Britain for Australia. He was an
aeronautical engineer who turned to novel writing, novels with settings
in the air world. So, when he came to write an apocalyptic novel, it was
quite authorative from a technical point of view. The life of an
Australian community as it awaits the arrival of what will probably be
totally fatal clouds of nuclear fallout (read more)
Review by DinadansFriend
(LibraryThing), January 27, 2024
Good
story but somewhat depressing, because it's about the end of humanity
in Australia after an all-out nuclear war in the North. Just waiting for
the radiation to come! A nuclear sub is based there.
Review by kslade
(LibraryThing), January 3, 2024
This
was perfect for the time I was reading it - during the war in the
Ukraine, after a couple of Alan Garner books. Very English, very British
values, but a beautiful soft vision of the end of the world.
Review by andrewlorien
(LibraryThing), November 28, 2022
Imagine
that the northern hemisphere is blanketed with radiation and all animal
life is gone. The radiation is moving to the southern hemisphere and
latitude by latitude succumbs. People living south of Melbourne await
what scientists say is inevitable: death. The different ways that people
handle this makes it one of those books that is hard to put down.
Review by burritapal
(LibraryThing), October 23, 2022
What
would you do if you know that you will be dead in a few months? What
would you do if you know that humanity will disappear shortly after your
death? Most authors will tell you a story of struggle and attempt to
save humanity. Shute disagrees - in his novel humanity is doomed, even
if they are not ready to admit it. It all ended quickly - there was a
war, someone threw a bomb, someone (read more)
Review by AnnieMod
(LibraryThing), January 31, 2022
I knew it was going to be sad, but was absolutely devastating.
Review by Deelightful
(LibraryThing), September 4, 2019
Nevil
Shute's post-apocalyptic 1957 novel On the Beach is surprisingly
powerful and affecting given the author's mediocre writing style and the
mostly mundane day-to-day events that comprise the narrative, albeit
against an extraordinary backdrop. A nuclear war has devastated the
Northern Hemisphere, and as the novel begins, life continues in
Australia, mankind's last remaining outpost, (read more)
Review by ghr4
(LibraryThing), January 15, 2019
Although it has a novel concept, this novel doesn't pull it off with the intensity that it deserves.
Review by DanielSTJ
(LibraryThing), December 18, 2018
People
of Australia are just waiting to die from the fallout of a massive
world war. There is no hope of survival, they don't even try. This is a
stirring, eerily believable short work by Nevil Shute. The main
characters are a US submarine commander, Dwight Towers, and his
counterpart, lt. commander Peter Holmes, an Australian. Towers has
survived by virtue of being out to sea at the time (read more)
Review by buffalogr
(LibraryThing), November 5, 2018
In
Australia, residents await a wave of radiation that’s slowly been
making its way south after the rest of the world participated in a
nuclear World War III. Although the basis for the story is bleak, the
humanity of the details makes this an incredibly personal read. It’s not
about the bombs and the battles; it’s about the quiet personal moments
between spouses and friends as they decide (read more)
Review by bookworm12
(LibraryThing), March 2, 2017
The
setting is 1963 in Melbourne, Australia and its surrounding towns, two
years after a nuclear World War III. The radioactive fallout has been
moving through the hemisphere killing all living things in its wake.
Australia (which didn't participate in the war) and New Zealand are
expected to be the last victims. This is an interesting look at how
these last survivors cope with, or deny, (read more)
Review by LeslieHurd
(LibraryThing), January 11, 2017
There
has been a war. The northern hemisphere is a radioactive wasteland.
Australia has survivors, but the radiation is heading their way. I
laughed when it talked about making gas being too outrageously expensive
to do - It would cost $2.00 a gallon! What would you do if you knew
that come September everyone would be dead? Would go on pretending that
it wasn't coming? Where would you (read more)
Review by nx74defiant
(LibraryThing), November 5, 2016
My
literary tastes lean more maximalist, and I have a more pessimistic
view of humanity, so the fact that I enjoyed this understated novel
about the last remaining survivors from a global nuclear apocalypse
facing certain death was truly surprising. Like the radioactive dust
that's circling the globe in a gentle death vise, Nevil Shute creates a
tightly written novel about facing one's (read more)
Review by gendeg
(LibraryThing), October 13, 2016
I
read this book without realizing it was science fiction, which is a
weird way to go about it, but that's just how it happened. This is set
in a post-apocalyptic world (Melbourne, Australia, specifically). It was
fascinating for me to read about a Melbourne I'd never been to - a
Melbourne from the 1950's and 60's. Sparse, stark, a little bit dirty, a
little bit worn around the edges, (read more)
Review by lydia1879
(LibraryThing), August 31, 2016
I
read this ages ago, of course, but although I remember it too poorly to
claim it here as read, I'm confident it's worth a re-read.
Review by Cheryl_in_CC_NV (LibraryThing), June 5, 2016
More reviews: [page 1] | page 2 | page 3
In 1963, World War III has devastated most of the populated world, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout,
and killing all human and animal life in the Northern Hemisphere. The
war began with a nuclear attack by Albania on Italy, and then escalated
with the bombing of the United States and the United Kingdom by Egypt.
Because the aircraft used in these attacks were obtained from the Soviet Union, the Soviets were mistakenly blamed, triggering a retaliatory strike on the Soviet Union by NATO.
The Soviets also attack the People's Republic of China, which may have
been a response to a Chinese attack aimed at occupying Soviet industrial
areas near the Chinese border. Most, if not all, of the bombs included cobalt to enhance their radioactive properties.
Global air currents are slowly carrying the lethal nuclear fallout across the Intertropical Convergence Zone to the Southern Hemisphere. The only parts of the planet still habitable are Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America, although they are slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning as well.
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Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea
