On the Beach

Our shower needed cleaning and I couldn’t do such a tedious chore without something to listen to.  The selection of audiobooks at the Covina Public Library is limited at best.  I’d already listened to all their John Steinbeck and the other authors I preferred.  They did have On the Beach by Nevil Shute that had potential.  My mom had recommended another book by Shute called Round the Bend and I’ve enjoyed most of my mom’s recommendations.  However, they did not have Round the Bend as an audio book, only On the Beach that, from the text on its case, seemed like a depressing story.  But I needed an audiobook and the choices were few so I decided not to “judge it by its cover” and give it a try.

Initially, I wasn’t disappointed.  It was about what the jacket described:  life in Australia after World War III has wiped out everyone in the Northern Hemisphere.  Shute wrote the original edition of the book in the 1950’s.  Despite its bleak setting, the story seemed strangely upbeat.  The characters had altered their lives around the major changes in the world.  They didn’t have petrol so they used horses and electric trams for transport.  They got food directly from dairies and farmers rather than from supermarkets.  Many people still had jobs.  Scientists predicted that the radiation from World War III would eventually spread south wiping out the whole population but that was several months away.  All the characters’ civility under the circumstances impressed me.  I would think that if people knew the end of the world was coming they would be living it up to excess, that there would be looting, rioting, and other lawlessness as society broke down.  Maybe people would go to great lengths to preserve the normalcy in their lives.  Or it could just be that people acted more civil in the 1950’s or people in Australia are more civil than in other countries.

The story centers around four main characters, three Australians and one American who happened to be in the southern hemisphere during World War III.  They all play different roles and have different ways of dealing with their world.  The two male main characters are naval officers who are still bound to serve the remnants of their branch of service.  Their mission takes them into the northern hemisphere and they learn more about the effects of the latest world war.  They are some mysteries to investigate and some possibilities for longer term survival.  They go to places in the Pacific Northwest with which I am familiar such as Seattle, Edmonds, and Bremerton.  All four characters develop and change as the months move closer to the predicted inevitable.  The book also introduces some minor characters.

Though the characters develop, the story doesn’t stray much from the course laid out at the beginning.  It’s more of a “slice of life” story than a plot-driven tale and the author picked a rather depressing life to slice.  Again, all the characters seem to face it with surprising civility perhaps to emphasize humanity’s best succumbing to a fate brought about by its worst.  The title, “On the Beach” doesn’t seem to have much significance other than it’s used often in the story.  We have to consider the time period during which Shute wrote it.  The Cold War and the Atomic age were both in full swing and the threat of nuclear war was very real.  The book was popular in the 1950’s.  Hollywood produced a movie of it starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner.  Some believe the book was responsible for the U.S. signing the treating abolishing above-ground nuclear tests.

On a personal note, the book made cleaning the shower less tedious and it also helped me get a couple of other chores done.  The recorded reader does a good job switching between the American and Australian accents and between the male and female voices.  I’d recommend the book to students studying the early Cold War and anyone with an interest in post-apocalyptic science fiction.