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Nevil Shute: On the Beach (Paperback, 1983, Ballantine Books) 4 stars

A novel about the survivors of an atomic war, who face an inevitable end as …

Review of 'On the Beach' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The world is slowly dying as a result of a nuclear holocaust, and the people of Melbourne Australia are doing what about it? Nothing! No one is struggling with knowing how much life is left for them, no one is trying to find a way to survive; they are just sitting there waiting for the radiation to float towards them. For a post-apocalyptic book, there is nothing happening in it; all the characters are playing nice and not even living life as though it would end in a few months (they continue to buy presents for their children, plant their garden, etc.) While I did enjoy the fact that I knew the cities in the book – Townsville gets a lot of mentions – I don’t think the plot progressed enough to recommend this book to anyone. If you want a slow moving post-apocalyptic book then I’d recommend Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road; it’s dark, beautiful and has great characters.