Customer Reviews (2)

So Happy To Have This Book!
I am a big fan of Nevil Shute, and have many of his books. On The Beach was not one of them...until recently! During a recent meeting with my book club, the members were discussing authors they like, and Nevil Shute ( who I had honestly not thought of in a long, long, time) was mentioned. It sent me on a hunt to find On The Beach, and as always, my first place to look for just about anything is Amazon!

The book arrived in record time, has all of the nostalgic feel and look I hoped it would! It is in excellent condition, and is a wonderful addition to my collection of older, beautifully written books!

My only friend is darkness
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.


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Customer Reviews (2)

Not Worthy of Shute
I'm a huge Shute fan. I have virtually all of his books, sometimes in multiple editions. I bought this to fill out my set. However, the publication of this early draft as a finished book does not do Nevil a service. It's like reading a class assignment where the students are asked to write a short story in the style of Shute.

I'm not a big fan of books based on unfinished manuscripts where the writer dies before he finished. But a manuscript published post mortem where it is clear the author didn't choose to publish it, that sucks.

Just writing this has caused me to reduce my rating from 3 to 2.

An interesting insight
The novella "The Seafarers" is the first new work by Nevil Shute published since 1961, and it will come as both a delight and a reminder to readers familiar with his other works.

The story is in many ways a different treatment of some of the themes which were at the core of his later book "Requiem for a Wren", published in the US under the title "The Breaking Wave". Readers of that book will recognize the character of Leading Wren Jean Porter, who finds her direction in life altered but unclear following five years of military service during WW2. Unlike the gothic and ultimately tragic themes of the later book, however, "The Seafarers" shows her finding a path in which her life is built up on the basis of her wartime experiences, instead of being destroyed by them.

It goes without saying that this novella, written around 1946-1947, shows Shute at the very height of his powers as a storyteller. His narrative skill and observation of characters is fully on a par with later works like "A Town Like Alice" and "Round the Bend". While it is perhaps fashionable in these days to decry Shute's storytelling as overly-simplistic and out-of-date, readers who have enjoyed his other works will enjoy this one also, and will recognise in it the common theme of almost all of his books - that '. . . the true success is to labour.' ... Read more