On the Beach (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

When I started to read this I found some of the language a little wooden, but it gives the book an innocent charm which is in stark contrast to the situation the plot finds itself in.

Australia is the last place on Earth habitable as the world is in the grip of a radiation cloud, the Australian people know they have very little time. This is a fantastic premise - and the ordinary goings on show how the people react to the situation.

A glimmer of hope from a radio signal coming from the US creates a bustle of activity as the signal is investigated.

This book is one of the most haunting I've ever read, it is a beautiful piece of work. I finished the book whilst on the bus home and I actually cried at the end.

There are those films you've seen: 'The Day After Tomorrow', '2012', 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', that use a sledghammer to batter you with their themes of climate change and man's illtreament of the planet; as a result, we've filed such important issues into the schlock drawer of disaster movie camp that can never really happen.

Not so with 'On The Beach'.

The characters in this novel do little more than try to quietly live out the last months of their lives, each accepting and preparing for their inevitable death. There are no violent heroic last ditch attempts to beat death or to prolong this inevitability. There are no forced romances. There is no real plot. Instead, you have a snapshot of how decent people make the most out of the time they have, and then die.

As a result, 'On the Beach's message is ultimately far more powerful and when the end comes, you feel suitably moved. You have put yourself in the characters' shoes and have walked around a bit in them, thinking if you would have their strength in the final analysis. Shute forces you to consider how easily such an event came to happen. Clearly, in Modern History the Cuban Missile Crisis did bring the world to the brink of such a catastrophe. Yet, if we think that it could not happen again, we are sadly naive.

Shute's novel should therefore transcend its historic context and remind every reader, in whatever time period they discover it, that we must not permit such an event to take place.

This is our collective responsibility.

EDIT

The reviewers who cite bad plotting and weak dialogue are somewhat missing the point. If you are looking for a tightly plotted thriller or doomsday actioneer, this is not for you. This is really a snapshot of very ordinary lives threatened by the extraordinary. The bleak nature of the ending is an inevitability and inescapable fact from the very first few pages. Yes, in some ways it is slow as each character tries to make the most of their lives and to some extent deny the reality they are faced with. The examples of 'made up' dialogue a previous reviewer mentioned illustrate that very fact. These criticisms actually highlight the novel's strengths.

Philip Larkin once said: 'Man's most remarkable talent is for ignoring death. For once the certainty of permanent extinction is realized, only a more immediate calamity can dislodge it from the mind, and then only temporarily....'

I believe those words most fittingly describe the reactions and actions of Shute's characters.

Written in the late 1950s, On the Beach must have struck to the heart of people's concerns about nuclear warfare following the devastation caused by atom bombs at the end of world war two. It is no less relevant today, with growing fears that some of the less stable countries in the world are secretly stockpiling nuclear weapons. The story follows the lives of people living in Australia after a nuclear war has wiped out all signs of life in the northern hemisphere. The resulting radioactivity is spreading south at a measured pace, and the only people still alive know that they only have a few months left to live. The story is as much about human nature as nuclear destruction, and as you read how different people cope with approaching death it makes you stop and wonder what your own reaction would be. Would you accept the inevitable with quiet dignity, even humour, as most of Neville Shute's characters do?
This is a disturbing book that reminds us of the total devastation that would follow nuclear war if it was allowed to run its course. Read it and make up your own mind.