On the Beach
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
A lovely little old book that will really make you want to cuddle up with the dog or go and make a new friend. Seriously, the end of the world as seen from the last year of Australian survivors of radioactive fallout.
The book is 50+ years old and the language and characterization feel a bit dated. The girls are helpless and the men are dashing (Even though any machismo is cut down by the impending apocalypse!). The USS Scorpion (Which is a much a character in the book as any flesh and blood) was lost in a 1968 accident with all hands. Eerie that we are reading about a dead ship in a book where the characters are all on limited time. Did we ever make cobalt bombs? And we still (Thankfully) only have nine confirmed states with nuclear weapons. Where did Shute's Albania get one from? Cobra Commander? There is nothing subtle about the exposition, but Shute masters the characterizations.
With all the characters facing ultimate death in September (The book begins a year away from when scientist believe the immense global fallout will reach Australia, one of the last inhabited places on Earth), some struggle on and others just give up. Particularly tragic for me was one protagonist's wife (Mary). She is amazed that, one day before the expected first hit, shops refuse to open and, the ones open, don't even bother with money. "Pay in orange peels, if you want," says a clerk. She asks her husband, who is sick with radiation sickness, to go buy a garden chair while people are dropping. Mary is never vicious and while some of her character smacks of helpless damsel, denial is a common way to face tragedy. Dwight, the American submarine captain that escaped the immediate fallout while at sea, all but gets a second wife in Moira Davidson, an independent woman set to party until the end. However, Dwight continues to refer to his wife and kids back in Connecticut in the present tense and refer to future events like his daughter's summer camp and son's expected growth. No one goes out in a blaze of glory and key characters slowly sli away after taking cyanide tablets distributed by whatever remains of the national government.
The book also has enough sly and clever touches to freak out an 11th grade English class. How those nations that never fired a single missile are left to suffer the worse fate. How rabbits (Which in the book are said to be the animal with the highest tolerance to radiation) will outlive people in Australia. Australia had a massive rabbit infestation in the 50's and are still consider a nuisance species. How an island settled a prison colony returns to those roots. And why didn't people run farther south? Maybe make something of it in Antartica or in underground bunkers. While the book's nuclear war demonstrates ultimate human error, why doesn't anyone show some human determination. Even some guy selling phony anti-radiation pills or lead suits would make it all the more realistic, albeit in a cartoony way.
This book, even with fifty years and the end of the Cold War behind it, still has the power to unnerve. If this was a cheap 50's pulp story and we all ended up laughing, then it would get a low rating. But it hits hard with a half-life akin to an atom bomb!
Peace!
The book is 50+ years old and the language and characterization feel a bit dated. The girls are helpless and the men are dashing (Even though any machismo is cut down by the impending apocalypse!). The USS Scorpion (Which is a much a character in the book as any flesh and blood) was lost in a 1968 accident with all hands. Eerie that we are reading about a dead ship in a book where the characters are all on limited time. Did we ever make cobalt bombs? And we still (Thankfully) only have nine confirmed states with nuclear weapons. Where did Shute's Albania get one from? Cobra Commander? There is nothing subtle about the exposition, but Shute masters the characterizations.
With all the characters facing ultimate death in September (The book begins a year away from when scientist believe the immense global fallout will reach Australia, one of the last inhabited places on Earth), some struggle on and others just give up. Particularly tragic for me was one protagonist's wife (Mary). She is amazed that, one day before the expected first hit, shops refuse to open and, the ones open, don't even bother with money. "Pay in orange peels, if you want," says a clerk. She asks her husband, who is sick with radiation sickness, to go buy a garden chair while people are dropping. Mary is never vicious and while some of her character smacks of helpless damsel, denial is a common way to face tragedy. Dwight, the American submarine captain that escaped the immediate fallout while at sea, all but gets a second wife in Moira Davidson, an independent woman set to party until the end. However, Dwight continues to refer to his wife and kids back in Connecticut in the present tense and refer to future events like his daughter's summer camp and son's expected growth. No one goes out in a blaze of glory and key characters slowly sli away after taking cyanide tablets distributed by whatever remains of the national government.
The book also has enough sly and clever touches to freak out an 11th grade English class. How those nations that never fired a single missile are left to suffer the worse fate. How rabbits (Which in the book are said to be the animal with the highest tolerance to radiation) will outlive people in Australia. Australia had a massive rabbit infestation in the 50's and are still consider a nuisance species. How an island settled a prison colony returns to those roots. And why didn't people run farther south? Maybe make something of it in Antartica or in underground bunkers. While the book's nuclear war demonstrates ultimate human error, why doesn't anyone show some human determination. Even some guy selling phony anti-radiation pills or lead suits would make it all the more realistic, albeit in a cartoony way.
This book, even with fifty years and the end of the Cold War behind it, still has the power to unnerve. If this was a cheap 50's pulp story and we all ended up laughing, then it would get a low rating. But it hits hard with a half-life akin to an atom bomb!
Peace!
RELEASE NOTES:
Left it in the third highest row of screen 12. Peace!
Left it in the third highest row of screen 12. Peace!
