On The Beach
On The Beach by Nevil Shute
Over ten years ago, jordanbabe98 lent me her copy of On The Beach. All I could remember of it was that the plot evolved around pepole in Australia awaiting the nuclear cloud that had already erased all life on the nothern hemisphere. Even the title of the book had slipped my mind.
But I bought it some weeks ago and have finished reading it yesterday. Such an awesome story.
As already said, the nothern hemisphere has already gone out at the start of the book due to a nuclear fallout. The story focuses on four people in Australia and how they decide to spend the last months of their lives. There's this young couple and their baby child,. And his new boss, the captain of the last U.S. American submarine who firmly believes he'll be going back home to his family in September (that's how long they've still got). And a young woman who has decided to drink herself to death because what sense is there in keeping on working?
One of the best scenes of the book which I had completely forgotten: one last car race, just some weeks before the expected arrival of the toxic cloud. Obviously, the writer must be a car enthusiast as well, because he details the whole race over some ten or so pages. But no matter whether you care for cars or not, it is still astonishing how he manages to illustrate the deserateness of the people. Not with lots of tears and heart-wrenching moments, by with cleverly based statements.
Of course, as the book draws to an end, he details the last hours of all the characters he introduced during the story and it's just amazing. Sure, it's not an easy read, but quite something out of the ordinary.
I just love stories dealing with apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic ideas because there's so much interesting potential there. And so much diversity. Take Mary Shelley's The Last Man for example, which I always like to describe as a crossover between Jane Austen's novels and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Or Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games. Or... well, I can't remember any other titles at the moment. Unless... Fallout (3) maybe. Alas, it's a genre mostly looked-down upon in central europe. Don't ask me why, it's just that everything "out of the ordinary" gets brandmarked as a story for young readers.
Oh well, it's lucky I like reading english books. :-)