On The Beach by Nevil Shute, 4 stars

[NancyJ]

🎼 “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)”
(This song was suggested as a prompt for a reading challenge shorty before I read this book. It seemed apt. )

This has to be the calmest apocalypse story I’ve ever read. Everyone was so civilized. We know from the beginning how it will likely end, and it is very sad. It’s still an interesting and worthwhile story that presents a positive view of human nature. Perhaps unrealistically so. The book was written in 1957 and may reflect the values of the time.

A nuclear war in the northern hemisphere quickly gets out of control, and communications shuts down. Everyone is presumed dead of radiation sickness. Australians are told the fallout will slowly make its way south. At the beginning of the year, the people near Melbourne were told that it will likely reach them in September. I might have envisioned that everyone would flood the southernmost part of the country, or fight to get on boats to New Zealand or Antarctica. But there is no indication that they did that. The people in a small town live as usual, but with bicycles not cars. Some people get drunk every day, but many keep working if they can, making products, providing services, sometimes for free, without any government control. No one seems to worry about money at all.

Several of the men work on a submarine that travels north along the west coast of America. The descriptions of what see are stark snd and chilling. Several characters realize that they are happier if they are busy, or have a sense on purpose. One of the men always dreamed of being a car racer, and he spent the last months of his life racing. A vivacious flirt realized that the alcohol wasn’t making her happy. She begins to fall in love, and realizes she needs a sense of purpose. She goes back to school to learn shorthand and secretarial skills, even though she knows there is no time to get a job afterward. (Really?) I was somewhat disappointed by what the author did with the few female characters in this book. He did so much better with a town called Alice.

[Olivermagnus]

I don't care for post-apocalyptic stories, but I really liked this. If you can find it, the 1959 film starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner is excellent. It had so much more emotional impact for me than the book did.

[Robin P]

I love Nevil Shute's books but I have avoided reading this one because of its subject and tone. All through WWII, he managed to write upbeat stories about ordinary people facing all kinds of hardships. Even the Japanese and the Nazis are often depicted as normal people, except for a few outliers. Although it sounds like his characters are the same here, it's too sad that he himself apparently was so discouraged by the threat of nuclear war that he couldn't come up with a happier ending.