Customer Reviews

On the Beach

5 star:		(81)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Mr. Shute had a wonderful scenerio for the end of the world in his book. Now if only he had given the idea to an author who knew how to write. This novel moved excrusiatingly slow and his repetitve australian dialect added nothing to help; if not hurt it. Out of all the books I have read, I would have to say that this one ranks among the top 10 worst in language usauge and sentence structure.

Well, we had to read this book in English class. It is supposedly a classic, but many of the members of my class agree with me that it does not deserve its award winning title. First of all the characters in the book have very odd relationships, not resembling those of real people. Secondly, human nature is to protect oneself and its offspring. All the characters in the novel are taking their death as it comes, but if they were smart they could build underground shelters, stay there for 5-10 years and then return to the surface when the radiation has lessened. All in all it was a bit of a dissapointment, however the movie is very well done and I would recommend that first and foremost before the book.

Poignant in its depiction of a selected few attempting to come to terms with the inevitable end of everything and everyone they have ever known and ever loved, On the Beach is a moving portrayal of those who have the courage to live those few, numbered days remaining to them as passionately and as fully as possible, even in the face of the end of the world. As they make plans that they know, within their souls, will never come to fruition as the world meets its doom, we become emotionally involved with Shute's characters, and we are reminded of how precious even such a mundane act as planting a garden can be. On the Beach makes you think, but it also makes you feel: this book is one of a small group of items in any medium that has ever made me cry. I can, with conviction, say On the Beach is the best book I have ever read, even being the bibliophile that I am. This book should be required reading for not only every student, but everyone. Period.

Review: I rate On the beach 1 1/2 stars. On the Beach is one of the most boring and repetitious books I have ever read in my entire life. Each successive chapter is much like the one before it, in terms of mood and feeling. The overall feeling is one of such utter hopelessness and depression that it seemed to make me almost regret reading it in the first place. The only reason that allows me to be glad that I wasted my time reading this book, is that I now know never to read it again. If you are interested in reading about hopelessness, read Dante's Inferno, or Slaughter House 5, or The Green Mile, or the first book of The Stand. I promise you that those books will be far more interesting and meaningful than On The Beach. This book is about the end of the world, and yet there is very little symbolism of any kind, religious, philosophical or otherwise. On the whole, this book was very shallow and each chapter left me with little new to think about, much less discuss. On The Beach was meant to be a kind of anti-war warning, but other than that, it is about as puddle on a barely degraded roadway. There is some interesting characterization yes, but many of the characters seemed fairly dull despite how ever much time was spend on them. I would have to be paid 90 dollars to ever want to read this book again. In many ways this book struck me as more boring than The Complete Journals of Lewis and Clark. On The Beach should have been written as a short story, not a full size book. A short version of On the Beach would have spared me of its terrible multi-doses of boredom while still effectively conveying its plot and feeling.

This book was one of the worst books I've read. Actually I couldn't finish it. It was very slow and there was no action. Not what I was looking for in this type of book. I left it on the last plane because I didn't want to waste the space in my bag.

This book is such a bore! I took the book on a 5-hour flight, looking forward to be entertained. I threw it in the trash on arrival, after painstakingly reading my way through it... since I had only one book! It has been written a few decades ago and it really shows. Most of the book is spent describing the nascent love between a submarine captain and a young Australian sassy airhead drunkard, through frivolous 2-cents dialogs they have in bars and parties. Half of the rest describes Australian social life. The other half recounts how the war happenned. No adventure, no action, no thrill, no discovery, no exploration, no mystery... Nothing... Certainly not the book I ll take on desert island or in an anti-atomic shelter!

I like this kind of book -- Alas, Babylon and Warday are among my favorite reading materials -- but I cannot abide Shute. His science is wrong, his people are wrong, everything's just wrong. He's so busy making a statement that he simply can't get *anything* right.

It's not the first time. In 1940, Shute wrote an apocalyptic book about the coming German bombing of London. As we all know, the Blitz was terrible; but in Shute's mind, the Blitz was literally going to be the end of the world. The only difference between that book and this is the addition of the prefix "atomic" to his favorite word "bombs".

Shute was a twit. Go read a good book. You won't find it here.

A great, simple book very well written and poignant. What's interesting about it is that as we enter the story, the nuclear war that will eventually doom the characters in the story has already occurred and is over. They are simply awaiting the lethal radioactive cloud to move down to the southern hemisphere and begin to kill everyone off. The people carry on their daily lives as if nothing has happened. But we see in several key scenes early in the book how painfully, heartbreakingly aware they really are. And that's the key power to the story. These people know they're doomed but what choice do they have except to continue on with their lives. The most painful scene I found in the book was how the young couple with the baby begin to plan out their garden for the next year knowing full well that they are not going to be around to see it. They're fooling themselves, obviously, but how else to cope with the inevitable.

In the end, the book has the same effect as a movie called "Testament" with Jane Alexander. You'll be depressed and feeling a little scared and hopeless.

This is not light reading.

The basic story is that Albania sends a plane with another country's markings to bomb the U.S. and we retaliate. However this is not a pacifist (don't build bombs book). This is not a sci-fi book. It could be a speculative fiction or just speculative.

The story begins after the war is completed and radiation is now covering the world. Australia is the last place to be covered. You read how different people are about to meat their end, some with hope, others with reckless abandon. Still there are those like the US sub commander Dwight Towers is loyal to his country to the end by not allowing U.S. property in the end to fall into the hands of the Aussies.

The book was written in the Cold War Era environment. So many people think that it is about countries and war; others think this story is some anti war story. The reality is that it is a study of people meeting a sure end and how they react. Other readers will balk at the actions of the people in this story; yet when they meet the same situation we will see how realistic the characters are. Still others will balk at the predictability of the characters. Still this is how many people get over a crisis by being predictable. It is these characteristics that make this novel timeless. Someone else must think so or they would not have made an updated version for our not too distant future.

Next to "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "The Color Purple", I can't think of any other books that made me cry. I first saw "On The Beach" in movie form, and it had such an effect on me, I had to buy the book. The book was even better than the movie, but just like the movie, poignant, depressing and only now can I not think about a potential nuclear holocaust. The book is so simple and matter of fact about the last days of civilization. At the same time, you want a miracle to happen, but it doesn't. With all that is going on in North Korea and Iran right now, the novel has sort of a desperate poignancy.