on the beach nevil shute book review

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

ON THE BEACH

by Nevil Shute ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 24, 1957

In 1939 Nevil Shute wrote a horrifyingly prophetic book, , which made the life of the average citizen under bombardment only too real, as time proved. In 1954 Philip Wylie wrote a grisly story of what the future might hold for an unprepared citizenry in Tomorrow. And now comes Shute again with a portrait of the last stand of mankind against an enemy over which there was no control- radiation, gradually encompassing and destroying the world. There has been a brief atomic war, launched by two nations and resulting in mutual destruction within a brief month. But then the real catastrophe comes, as the death dealing effects encompass the living world. In Australia, where only the upper fringes so far lie within the circle, the people of the community of which he writes have exact scientific knowledge of when their doom will descend. To some it brings cessation from all activities; to others, indulgence in excesses of one kind or another; to still others, refusal to face the inevitability of the end, and a grim determination to go on as if next Spring would find the blooming of bulbs planted in the Fall — and they there to see it. In the harbor is the one known surviving submarine of the U S A Navy. This submarine is sent on an expedition to determine through periscope and radar, what is behind the continued sending from a Puget Sound post. One sailor jumps ship- and goes back to his home. He is not allowed back, because of contamination; but his report is part of the record. The dead- caught in their daily round of living; no sign of life. But he has chosen. He prefers to meet his end, fishing familiar waters of his youth. The people of the story are very real; their tragic awareness becomes the possession of the reader. One hopes- to the end- for a miracle. But there is no miracle. It is an obsessive, nightmarish book, the more so because it is written on almost a deadpan level of narration, deliberately shorn of histrionics.

Pub Date: July 24, 1957

ISBN: 0307473996

Page Count: 250

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1957

SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

Share your opinion of this book

More by Nevil Shute

BOOK REVIEW

by Nevil Shute

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

More by Max Brooks

by Max Brooks

More About This Book

BOOK TO SCREEN

DARK MATTER

by Blake Crouch ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2016

Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.

A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.

Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.

Pub Date: July 26, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION | THRILLER | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | TECHNICAL & MEDICAL THRILLER

More by Blake Crouch

by Blake Crouch

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

Karissa Reads Books

Book Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute

On the Beach had long been on my TBR list. Choosing it now in the midst of a global pandemic added a strange layer to my reading.

The story takes place in Australia, a few months after a brief global war has destroyed the planet. Atomic and cobalt bombs set off around the world have led to the deaths of millions by radiation poisoning. North America, Europe, and Asia are wiped out and the radiation is steadily creeping toward the Southern Hemisphere. In Australia, the population knows that they have approximately six months to live and so the novel is a fascinating study into human nature and what it might be like to live at the end of the world. The world has ended with a bang but these characters are there to witness the last whimpers.

We have Peter and Mary, a young couple with a baby daughter, attempting to live their lives as normally as possible. They go so far as planning out their garden for the next spring, a season they will never live to see. It’s their way of coping with a death that is out of their control.

Mary looked at her gratefully. “Well, that’s what I think. I mean, I couldn’t bear to – to just stop doing things and do noting. You might as well die now and get it over.” Moira nodded. “If what they say is right, we’re none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”

It’s heartbreaking and a little inspiring to see them planning for their future until the very last moment.

Moira is a friend of theirs who takes a more nihilistic approach to the end of the world. She drinks heavily and indulges herself in whatever way she chooses at the moment, believing her choices no longer matter. Peter is a naval officer, assigned as a liaison officer to an American submarine that has ended up stuck in Melbourne. Peter invites the American captain, Dwight, home for a weekend and invites Moira along to entertain him, worried that Dwight will be saddened at the sight of ordinary home life. Dwight and Moira strike up an unexpected friendship that begins to change the way Moira lives out her last few months.

Dwight is an interesting character. An American from the East Coast, he has a wife and two children that are, undoubtedly, dead from radiation. In order to function however, he continues to think of them as alive and waiting for his return in September. (This is the estimated date of the radiation poisoning reaching Melbourne.) He even goes so far as carefully choosing out presents to bring home to them. He is a by-the-book leader, following the rules strictly until the very end because he believes in the structures of society and he wants to be reunited with his family knowing he did everything right.

While the crew of the submarine, including Peter and Dwight, do make some exploratory missions into the radioactive zones, including one where they venture as far as Seattle to investigate a radio signal, this is not where the real action of the novel exists. If you read On the Beach expecting an exciting, apocalyptic story, you’ll likely be disappointed. This is a novel about people and about the ways they might react, knowing the world ends. Despite the characters being Australian and American it had a very stiff-upper-lip British feel to me. There is drunkenness in the street and people stop going to work but for the most part society continues to function normally. There doesn’t seem to be a significant increase in looting or violence. Looking at the world as it is around me today, I wonder if this is a realistic portrayal or idealism on Shute’s part.

That said, as we are currently living through a time like no other, I found a lot in the novel to recognize. People do keep living their lives in the midst of turmoil. We do plan for the future, even when that future is uncertain. We are capable of great good in the midst of pain. I don’t know if Shute’s version is accurate but it’s one I would want to aspire to.

She said furiously, “Don’t you know ?” “No, I don’t,” he replied. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the world before.”

Share this:

Published by Karissa

View all posts by Karissa

15 thoughts on “Book Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute”

This sounds so interesting! I love apocalyptic stories that use the situation as setup to really dive into the characters.

It’s really good! I’ve been wanting to read it for years now and it exceeded expectations.

Reading it a few months ago before the pandemic, I wondered even then if we would behave with as much dignity in similar circumsances. In some ways I’ve been impressed by our response and in other ways deeply depressed. I do wonder if people back then would have acted so differently to us, and I suspect they might. Society was much more important than the individual back then, and we’d all just come through the war so were used to suffering and discipline. I often wonder if the decadent, rather hedonistic, west could actually fight a war now as we did in the ’40s. I hope never to find out…

That’s an interesting point and one I hadn’t considered. That Shute wrote the book coming out of a world war where people had come together for the greater good. In many ways, I think we’re seeing that in our worldwide lockdowns but of course there are dissenters and selfish people. I do have a hard time believing there wouldn’t be more violence than what Shute portrays.

Locally, our provincial health officer (who is the one making the decisions around COVID-19 and lockdowns etc here) has said that they have found the best way to get people to comply with regulations is not law enforcement or threat of punishment but to remind people that their actions can help others and are protecting those around them. I found that quite inspiring.

Yes, that’s how they’ve been trying to get us all to wear masks here – for the protection of others rather than ourselves. If my supermarket is anything to go by (the only place I’m allowed to go!), the response is patchy…

I’d say about a third of people around here are wearing masks in stores. And at least half of them move them around and touch them while wearing them. The message around masks here has been very inconsistent. It’s basically, You don’t have to wear them but maybe you should except it probably won’t make a difference anyway.

Although I don’t drink and have never done drugs in my life, I get the feeling I’d be the lady seeking out some kind of psychedelics if we had six months to go. I’m not sure this would be the right book for me right now, but I can see from your review what a lot of tenderness this book has.

I have a feeling I would be Mary – maybe not gardening, but insisting on living my normal life as if nothing had changed. Shute doesn’t do a great job of portraying Peter and Mary as parents (he consistently refers to the baby as “it”) but he does show some of the heartbreak decisions they have to make at the end. In a strange way, it’s an inspiring book but I understand not wanting to read it right now.

Wait, the narrator calls the baby “it,” or the father does? I could understand the father slipping because he’s trying to distance himself from this child that will die, but not the narrator. That’s odd.

The third person narrator does. The only thing I can guess is that Shute wasn’t really a family man but wikipedia tells me he had 2 daughters!

The thought of this book gives me chills! And Dwight, what a heartbreaking character, just thinking of him makes my heart ache a little ;(

It’s both heartbreaking and hopeful. It’s a situation you hope we’ll never see but if we do, I hope we all respond the way these characters do.

[…] On the Beach – Nevil Shute (Vintage Books, 2009) […]

[…] On the Beach by Nevil Shute […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

On the Beach review – an achingly beautiful depiction of the end of the world

Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company The Picture of Dorian Gray director Kip Williams has taken a more simple approach with Nevil Shute’s novel and the result is stirring and sad

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

I n 1957, Nevil Shute, the British aeronautical engineer, Naval Reserve officer and novelist, wrote of the end of all things as we know it in his novel On the Beach. In his version of Melbourne in 1963, nuclear war has wiped out signs of life in the northern hemisphere, and radiation poisoning is drifting on the wind towards the city. With only a few months to go and no way to save yourself, what matters most? Who do we become when the world changes? Can we stop a catastrophe, or do we lean into it?

Here in 2023, Tommy Murphy (ABC’s Significant Others, Holding the Man) has adapted the novel for the stage in a world that is especially sensitive to how close we are to the end. We have been buffeted by natural disasters brought on by the climate crisis; we have lived the eerie twilight of Covid-19 lockdowns; we are gripped by the horror of Russia-Ukraine war. We know very well the tension between destruction abroad and its delayed impact at home. Murphy’s play is still set in the 1960s, but it is suffused with our own dread and hopelessness; it is a much-needed vessel for our grief.

We first meet Peter (Ben O’Toole) and Mary (Michelle Lim Davidson) who look at the end differently, but for the same reason: they have a baby girl, and the loss of her future is unconscionable. Peter clings to hope that the world will right itself, while Mary is much more pragmatic. This is a welcome update from the novel, which dismisses women as unhelpful to their men in times of crisis, indulging in flights of fancy and denying hard truths. Murphy’s script, which blends lines from the book with a deeper and more nuanced exploration of character, is gripping.

Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

When Peter, a navy man, is drafted on to the submarine USS Scorpion for fact-finding, a jumbled transmission from Seattle becomes a promise of relief – but Mary can’t escape the practicalities of their fate. Scientist John Osborne (Matthew Backer) is more sceptical, brought onboard by the government to record the nuclear fallout. Later, we see how he’s coping with the promise of death – he’s bought a Ferrari and is planning to race it in an all-amateur Grand Prix that’s more of a death wish.

Dwight (Tai Hara), a captain and one of just a few Americans who escaped their country’s fate, is living in his own devastating denial, where his dead wife and children are still very present. Peter and Mary introduce him to their friend Moira (Contessa Treffone) in hopes of keeping him occupied. She’s a bright and thriving presence; their tender care for each other (Murphy’s script builds in more emotional complexity here too) creates space for them both to find some final moments of grace.

On the Beach is directed by Kip Williams, STC’s artistic director, who is best known for his cine-theatre approach to productions like The Picture of Dorian Gray, which played sell-out return seasons in Australia and is now heading to the West End with Succession’s Sarah Snook in the lead role. There are no cameras or video screens here: instead, Williams’ elegant, achingly beautiful production places people first, showcasing the vulnerability of bodies reaching for each other on an often spare stage.

Michael Hankin’s set design is evocative of time and space rather than demonstrative, and it gives us very real room to absorb the story. Grace Ferguson’s sound design is stirring and sad, and it dances with Damien Cooper’s lights, which capture something about late light, shadows and absence, making it feel all the more potent when our characters reach out for each other. A set piece is wheeled out to stand in as a pier but is later repurposed to represent Peter and Moira’s veranda and, later, the submarine; just like that, new worlds are summoned.

after newsletter promotion

Sometimes it is the simple theatrical techniques that are the most effective. Large sheets billow in the wind to suggest the threat in the air and it is as moving as poetry. Surprise costume changes and clever choreography transform one character into the ghost of another and it feels like a memory. One final, unexpected image on the stage, which shouldn’t be spoiled, is particularly arresting. Theatre’s aliveness is a gift, and this production of On the Beach is in love with life: the ways we connect, how hard we love, how desperately we try to make something of our time together – even when we know it all ends.

The play finds its way to the novel’s bleak final moments and it’s desperately sad, but it’s not desolate. There is love here, and community and compassion. This production is a hand reaching out for our own, a reminder that we are not yet done and, crucially, we are not alone.

STC’s production of On the Beach is on at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney until 12 August

• Australian theatre
• New South Wales

Most viewed

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

PG-13: Risky Reads

The end is near, and it's no walk 'on the beach'.

Myla Goldberg

On the Beach

Buy featured book.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

• Independent Bookstores

Myla Goldberg's books include The False Friend and Bee Season .

Growing up, I had pretty much the same interests as any other early '80s kid: I loved The Muppets and Schoolhouse Rock , and I was obsessed with mutually assured nuclear destruction.

In those Cold War days, apocalypse was in the air, from Sting crooning that he hoped the Russians loved their children too, to a made-for-TV spectacle called The Day After , which branded the image of a mushroom cloud into my 12-year-old brain and inspired me to craft my own survival plan: When the time came and war seemed imminent, I would hop a plane with my family and head to Australia. There, on that isolated island continent far removed from the U.S. and the USSR, I would live happily ever after.

Then, one day while browsing the shelves of my middle school library, I picked up On the Beach , by Nevil Shute. A title like that could have inferred young love or a summer idyll.

This was not that book.

Carried by taut, no-nonsense prose, I entered a post-WWIII world, in which nuclear blasts have already eradicated life from the Earth's Northern Hemisphere. The planet's only remaining habitable places are parts of Africa, South America, New Zealand and ... you guessed it, Australia.

Being old enough to know what catastrophe was, but still young enough to think that it made exceptions, I had that almost inborn childhood instinct that the larger rules of the world — death, war, sickness — applied to everyone but myself. Now, my survival plan had been vindicated in print, and everything I had ever thought about my own exceptionalism had been proved true!

Then I got to page 10.

Myla Goldberg sings and plays accordion and banjo in the Brooklyn art-punk band The Walking Hellos . Jason Little hide caption

Myla Goldberg sings and plays accordion and banjo in the Brooklyn art-punk band The Walking Hellos .

As it turns out, most of On the Beach is taken up by the people of Australia waiting to die. The radioactive fall-out clouds are drifting ever southward, and there's nothing anyone can do but track their inexorable progress. Peter Holmes, a newlywed with a young wife and baby daughter, is assigned to one of the world's last remaining submarines, which travels north to investigate the source of a faint radio signal, in the hopes of making contact with whomever is sending it.

There is no happy ending. The submarine mission only confirms the thoroughness of the devastation, leaving everyone in Australia — including Peter and his young family — with no option but to try to find small ways to enjoy their remaining time together before succumbing to agonizing radiation sickness or opting out quickly and painlessly with free suicide pills supplied by the government. The only small solace the book offers is that it is possible to face the end with our humanity intact.

By the end of On the Beach , I had come to the sobering realization that nuclear war makes no exceptions, not even for young girls.

I'm grateful to have read On the Beach when I did. At some point, we're all forced to confront how complicated and heartbreaking life can be, and how often it defies the best-made plans. I can think of no gentler way to have been introduced to that lesson.

PG-13 is produced and edited by Ellen Silva and Rose Friedman.

• Rick’s Amazon Authors Page

On the Beach by Nevil Shute (book review)

by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2020 | Book reviews , Books , Global climate change , History , Reflections , World history | 0 comments

It’s worth a second read…

Book review:, on the beach.

by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)

New York: Vintage International, Vintage Books, 1957

I could not read On the Beach again without taking on some of the terminal burden of the characters. I awakened some of my disturbing memories ( Weltschmerz , perhaps) of reading it the first time, almost 60 years ago.

Maybe you think you know the story line: in the aftermath of worldwide nuclear destruction, an inescapable deadly radioactive miasma is finally devastating Australia. The land down under is the last refuge of human beings on the planet.

All of them know they’re going to die in a couple months. Many of them choose to live as if they don’t know it.

The reader doesn’t need to apply much imagination. On the Beach is a baldly powerful chronicle of the unyielding imperatives of human nature, including the impulse to work side by side with someone you love, planting a garden, hoping to share a rich crop next year, ignoring the darkness in the northern sky.

Nevil Shute’s story is not out of date.

I desperately fear that my grandchildren may be re-reading this book as they survive in the hills, trying to ignore the advancing seas below.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.

Book review: Shantung Compound

They didn’t care much,         about each other…, by langdon gilkey, my first name was rain: a dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,, and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on amazon (paperback and kindle), and free in kindle unlimited, search amazon for “richard carl subber”.

© 2020 – 2024, Richard Subber . All rights reserved.

• Print Friendly

Recent Posts

• reach out, “touch the music,” my poem
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
• wrath and anger…each a no no
• “…connected to my past…”…“amaze,” my poem
• the third kind…  “Arrival,” movie review
• Book reviews
• Books Commentary
• Joys of reading
• American history
• Revolutionary War
• World history
• Reflections
• Reviews of other poets
• Global climate change
• Power and inequality
• Human Nature
• Theater and play reviews

Pin It on Pinterest

• Book Review Index
• Review Policy / Other Services
• About/Contact

‘This is the way the world ends’: Nevil Shute’s On the Beach warned us of nuclear annihilation. It’s still a hot-button  issue

Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of Sydney

Disclosure statement

Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

One of the most haunting poems of the 20th century, T.S. Eliot ’s The Hollow Men (1925), concludes:

This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

In 1958, on his 70th birthday, Eliot was asked whether he would consider writing these lines, probably his most quoted, again. His answer was both noteworthy and categorical.

He admitted he would not. He said that “while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone’s mind”. (And he was “not sure that the world will end with either”.)

Indeed, Nevil Shute’s classic novel of nuclear annihilation, On the Beach, published in June 1957, used Eliot’s famous lines as an epigraph. And the nuclear threat is still very much at the top of our collective mind.

The Sydney Theatre Company is staging the very first stage adaptation of Shute’s novel. And Oppenheimer , one of 2023’s two most-hyped films, tells the story of the man referred to as “the father of the atomic bomb”.

‘Australia’s most important novel’

Journalist Gideon Haigh calls On the Beach “arguably Australia’s most important novel – important in the sense of confronting a mass international audience with the defining issue of the age”.

British-born Shute emigrated in 1950 to Australia, where he lived outside Melbourne. As well as writing novels, he worked as an aeronautical engineer.

The title of On the Beach – which started life as a four-part story called The Last Days on Earth – ostensibly referred to a Royal Navy expression for reassignment. (Shute spent time in the Royal Naval Reserve during the second world war.) However, as readers of Eliot’s poetry will know, the phrase also appears late in The Hollow Men:

In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river.

As in Eliot’s poem, the characters that cluster together in the pages of Shute’s novel, set in and around Melbourne between 1962 and 1963, tend on occasion to avoid speech.

This comes to the fore in the following passage, which focuses on a dinner party hosted by Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy. The atmosphere is both claustrophobic and delirious:

For three hours they danced and drank together, sedulously avoiding any serious topic of conversation. In the warm night the room grew hotter and hotter, coats and ties were jettisoned at an early stage, and the gramophone went on working through an enormous pile of records, half of which Peter had borrowed for the evening. In spite of the wide-open windows behind the fly wire, the room grew full of cigarette smoke.

The reason why the guests at Peter’s party are so keen to avoid serious talk is both simple and depressing. They are trying very hard to forget that they are all going to be dead from radiation poisoning in a matter of months.

Shute brings the reader up to speed after the dinner party wraps up. A massive nuclear war has devastated the entire northern hemisphere, wiping out all forms of life there. And the radioactive fallout generated during the conflict is now creeping – slowly but surely – into the southern hemisphere.

Shute makes it clear there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about this. In tonally dispassionate prose, he reveals that vast swathes of Australia have already been rendered uninhabitable due to radiation poisoning. The only thing the characters who remain can do is wait.

As Moira Davidson says to the American submarine captain, Dwight Towers: “It’s like waiting to be hung.” Hence the desperate need for moments of temporary respite and distraction.

Different characters deal with the situation in different ways. Those who still have jobs go to work. Those who don’t, stay at home or go shopping. Some, like Moira, take to drink and rail uselessly against the unfairness of it all:

‘I won’t take it,’ she said vehemently. ‘It’s not fair. No one in the Southern Hemisphere ever dropped a bomb, a hydrogen bomb or a cobalt bomb or any other sort of bomb. We had nothing to do with it. Why should we have to die because other countries nine or ten thousand miles away from us wanted to have a war? It’s so bloody unfair.’

Moira’s anger eventually gives way to something approaching resignation. “A tear trickled down beside her nose and she wiped it away irritably; self-pity was a stupid thing, or was it the brandy?” She comes to accept this is “the end of it, the very, very end.”

Moments after this, Moira, who is already gravely ill with radiation poisoning, ends her life. She takes a couple of suicide tablets, puts them in her mouth, and washes them down “with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of her big car”.

This is the way Shute’s novel of nuclear extinction ends: not with a bang but with a whimper. Released at the height of the Cold War , On the Beach struck a chord with millions of concerned readers.

Read more: Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals

Usefully entertaining

By the September of 1957, Shute’s novel – which sold over 100,000 copies within six weeks of initial publication – had been serialised by dozens of American newspapers. A copy had found its way to the desk of John F. Kennedy, the next president of the United States. And Hollywood was about to call.

Directed by Stanley Kramer, the cinematic adaptation of On the Beach – which was filmed on location in Victoria and showcased the talents of Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire – hit the big screen in December 1959.

Shute famously detested the movie, which received decidedly mixed reviews. In a sense, Shute’s response is surprising, as the novelist clearly wanted to get his message about the perils of nuclear war across to as wide an audience as possible.

Shute’s didactic inclinations are evident towards the end of the novel. “Peter,” the character Mary asks, “why did this all this happen to us?” Even at this late stage, Mary, whose radiation-racked body is spasming uncontrollably, wants to know whether things might have panned out differently. Her husband’s reply is revealing:

‘I don’t know […] Some kinds of silliness you just can’t stop,’ he said. ‘I mean, if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there’s not much that you or I can do about it. The only possible hope would have been to educate them out of their silliness.’

Shute makes a similar point in a letter he wrote in 1960. He holds that a popular writer

can often play the part of the enfant terrible in raising for the first time subjects which ought to be discussed in public and which no statesman cares to approach. In this way, an entertainer may serve a useful purpose.

Knowing this, it seems likely Shute would have been delighted to read reviews that praised the book’s “emotional wallop” while simultaneously demanding it “be made mandatory reading for all professional diplomats and politicians”.

While the science in the novel was somewhat flawed, Shute’s cautionary tale undoubtedly spoke to the collective zeitgeist.

Read more: Friday essay: if growing US-China rivalry leads to 'the worst war ever', what should Australia do?

Enduring influence

On the Beach was released mere months after the creation of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy in the United States, and just before the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom.

Though it seems fair to say Nevil Shute’s general literary standing has diminished in recent years, On the Beach continues to exert a pull on the popular cultural imagination.

The influence of Shute’s novel, which was remade in 2000 as a film for Australian television, can be observed in various post-apocalyptic works, including George Miller’s Mad Max franchise and the late Cormac McCarthy’s The Road . (If anything, the ending of On the Beach is even bleaker than in McCarthy’s masterpiece.)

Shute’s vision of humanity’s self-inflicted destruction is eerily resonant in our time of climate emergency. The nuclear threat remains, too, in our perilous historical moment of democratic backsliding and failing nuclear states .

It seems increasingly likely the world as we know it is coming to an end – if it hasn’t already. The question remains: will it be with a bang or a whimper?

On The Beach runs at the Sydney Theatre Company 24 July to 12 August 2023, with previews 18–21 July.

• Australian literature
• Sydney Theatre Company
• Nuclear war
• Nuclear threat
• Oppenheimer

Data Manager

Director, Social Policy

Communications Coordinator

Head, School of Psychology

Senior Research Fellow - Women's Health Services

• Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Science Fiction

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

On the Beach Hardcover – August 1, 1998

• Print length 250 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Lightyear Pr
• Publication date August 1, 1998
• Dimensions 5.75 x 1 x 8.75 inches
• ISBN-10 0899683657
• ISBN-13 978-0899683652
• Lexile measure 730L
• See all details

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Get to know this book

What's it about.

Popular highlight

Editorial reviews, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lightyear Pr (August 1, 1998)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 250 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0899683657
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0899683652
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 730L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1 x 8.75 inches
• #221,592 in Science Fiction (Books)

About the author

Nevil shute.

Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899 in Ealing, London. He studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. Following his childhood passion, he entered the fledgling aircraft industry as an aeronautical engineer working to develop airships and, later, airplanes. In his spare time he began writing and he published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926, using the name Nevil Shute to protect his engineering career. In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they had two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death in 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), A Town Like Alice (1950), and On the Beach (1957).

Photo by w:Australian Women's Weekly [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• Non-Fiction & Other
• Console Corner
• Cardboard Corner
• Culture Corner
• Articles & Essays

Friday, February 25, 2022

Review of on the beach by nevil shute.

Like George Stewart’s Earth Abides , On the Beach is pastoral post-apocalypse. Set in the aftermath of WWIII, the majority of the world has been wiped out by nuclear war. The story takes place in southern Australia, a place not yet touched by nuclear fallout, and is centered around the lives of four people. The first is the American, Captain Dwight Towers. Piloting the submarine USS Scorpion when the bombs started falling, he now works de facto for the Australian government as there is no US to go home to. Peter Holmes is an Australian officer who has been assigned as liaison aboard the Scorpion , together with another Austrialian, the science officer John Osbourne. And lastly is Moira Davidson, friend of Holmes and young woman at ends what to do with her life. These four people try to rationalize their existence and live normal lives despite the damage they know has been done to the world. Each proves to have their own manner of dealing with the physical, mental, and emotional adversity, but is it enough?

To get this out of the way, On the Beach is not a post-apocalyptic novel full of zombies and mutant wastelands. Like Stewart, Shute approaches the post-nuclear situation from a realistic, human perspective. The actions, interactions, and emotions of Towers, Holmes, Osbourne, and Davidson form the core of the novel, and are pushed ever closer to their limits the more those characters explore the world. A quotidian, pastoral mood arising, On the Beach feels like J.G. Ballard without the anxiety. While the book’s title is a metaphor for ‘retired from military service’, it’s not a stretch to see it as likewise representing atmosphere.

Does On the Beach transcend its 1957 publication date? Yes and no. The looming Cold War threat that Shute brings to its speculative conclusion eliminates that portion of the book’s relevancy. However, the people, their concerns, and their actions and reactions do have a timeless feel. There is something of Shute’s authorial voice that feels classic, outdated, but by and large the character portraits still feel real. Our current, global threats are not nuclear in nature (at least not directly), but human reaction remains relatable in the novel. If there is anything missing, it is the social unrest such circumstances would inevitably give rise to. Another way of putting this is, the four main characters are not wholly representative; chaos is literally off-stage.

In the end, On the Beach is a novel that, as described, will appeal to readers who appreciate the more human side of speculative fiction. Despite the setting being post-nuclear holocaust, Shute focuses on the people’s reaction to the situation rather than the possibilities for horror and sensawunda. That being said, the novel is not as deep psychologically as it could have been; Shute maintains a so-called ‘British austerity’ in portraying the characters. As mentioned, readers of Ballard’s early disaster novels will likely find a lot to enjoy in Shute’s novel, e.g. The Drought, The Drowned World, The Crystal World, etc. ( The Drowned World published five years after On the Beach , it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn Shute was inspirational to Ballard.)

I read this novel some years ago and found the characters and their decisions upon realising that there was no hope, dreadfully depressing but at the same time heart-warming . A brilliant and well written book. Humans are nothing without fellow human companionship and we only realise what we have, when it is lost and when it is too late to change the outcome. Although written in 1957 it could be even become (hopefully not) a 21st century scenario! A depressing but thought provoking book that even now, many years later it makes me ponder about mankind's foolishness.