On the Beach Audiobook By Nevil Shute cover art

On the Beach

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On the Beach

By: Nevil Shute
Narrated by: Simon Prebble
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About this listen

A war no one fully understands has devastated the planet with radioactive fallout from massive cobalt bombing. Melbourne, Australia, is the only area whose citizens have not yet succumbed to the contamination. But there isn’t much time left, a few months, maybe more—and the citizens of Melbourne must decide how they will live the remaining weeks of their lives, and how they will face a hopeless future.

Published in 1957, On the Beach is considered a classic nuclear holocaust novel, and a masterpiece of speculative fiction.

©1957 Nevil Shute Norway (P)1991 Recorded Books, LLC
Classics Dystopian Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Tearjerking
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Featured Article: Listen Like the World Is Ending with These Apocalyptic Audiobooks


Apocalyptic audiobooks all have one big thing in common: each is set in a world that is ending or just on the brink of collapse. Outside of that, apocalyptic and postapocalyptic stories take on all sorts of topics, twisting and turning into so many different genres and directions. Whether you love sci-fi adventures or prefer character-driven stories that reflect on real-world issues, this collection of listens has something for everyone.

Compelling Storyline • Profound Character Portrayals • Realistic Scenario Depiction • Thought-provoking Premise
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The characters and their lives are described realistically, with compassion, attention to detail, and even humor. The story could happen as easily today as when the story was set over 50 years ago. It will give you a new perspective on your own life as you realize we could share the same fate today if we don't take nuclear disarmament seriously.

You won't be able to put this down

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Yes, it is bleak, but most of the bleakness is below the surface. Human nature dictates that most people will attempt to go on with their lives as best they can. Shute never lets go of that tension between bleakness and everyday life, yet there is very little preachiness in his telling. The behavior of the people in this situation feels right for the most part. Shute attempts to account for the range of possible reactions while keeping his cast of characters to a manageable size. I think by and large the population would react with the vague sense of unreality that he describes. Modern studies of people's reactions to major natural disasters bear him out on this. There are some very human and touching moments such as Commander Towers looking for presents for his children.

Shute also avoids trying to explain too much about how the world got into the situation presented in the book. The why is unimportant. The 1959 movie struggled with both the issue of a backstory and the preachiness aspect. I sympathize with the film maker's need for the ending to make more of a statement. As a thought experiment, I think Shute makes the wiser choice of leaving it up to the reader to ponder.

Possibly the bleakest book ever

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Would you listen to On the Beach again? Why?

I might play it again.

What did you like best about this story?

When the girl's bra fell off.

What about Simon Prebble’s performance did you like?

He did a good job.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

If you only see one movie for the rest of your life....

Life's A Beach

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Absolute must read.

I just finished it and honestly i don't have the heart to say more. Devastating but beautiful.

Nothing like it

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An excellent and sad book about the end of humanity.
The narrator is good. WW3 is truly horrific.

Excellent story

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That was the thing I found most difficult to take about this apocalyptic tale. It seems that many of the main characters sought refuge in pretending that what was happening, wasn’t. And “Uncle Sam wouldn’t like it” is a terrible way to reason when there is no Uncle Sam and the very last bastion of human civilization is about to pop off. That’s why you kept men and women apart on their last day of life? What a demented dweeb. I’m sure such staunch adherence to duty was comforting to men and women of the 1950s, however.

The book kept me interested and the narrator was excellent. I wasn’t sure a story set in Australia would hold my attention, but it did, right to the end. This novel does not compare to Alas,Babylon in my opinion. It does not have the intense level of detail and realism about the international conflict that led to nuclear destruction. The characters aren’t quite as mesmerizing, the end isn’t quite as soul shaking. There’s a tease in the Shute novel that keeps leading the reader to draw a different conclusion and while the tease isn’t quite fair it does work. Overall a good novel, but not a great one and not the best of the genre either. Liked, not loved.

Denial

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i like books written from this time period. but with this one, given its premise, i could not help but wonder how it would end. but it just kept along its path, blending the mundane with the unimaginable--always warm and personal and convincingly real, always practical and reasonable--and kept marching toward the obvious and inevitable ending i thought was just too unthinkable to actually be the ending. but it was. and for that reason, and many others, i think this is the saddest book ive ever read. and certainly one i will not soon forget.

This is what the very, very end looks like

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A touching performance,this sort of thing could very well happen in a world like ours. I took me a long time to finish this book.

Sad ending

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I read this book in high school many years ago. It had a huge impact on my life... and still does.

Still great

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On the Beach is just...wow! I cried at the end. I never do that, no matter how sad a story is, but I genuinely cried at the end of this one. It's weird because I didn't find any of the characters to be particularly interesting, weird, eccentric, or "memorable" like characters from other books I've read/listened to. When compared to characters from other works, honestly you could say that the characters in this book were flat out "boring", but I think that's what made the books so powerful. The characters were "boring", but that just made them more relatable. Their relatability made the ending hit that much harder for me. I felt like I was watching my family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. having to go through this situation instead of some "protagonist" or "antagonist" or fictional characters in general. This books was just so emotionally powerful. One of my favorite movies ever is Pirates of the Caribbean (the 1st one) and I love Captain Jack Sparrow, but he is way to interesting of a character to be relatable. The character is great, but I have simply never met anyone like Captain Jack Sparrow in real life. The character's in On the Beach, however, I could replace them all with people I interact with on a daily basis. Just because none of the characters are as interesting as Captain Jack Sparrow doesn't stop the book itself one of the best emotional experiences I have ever gotten from fiction.

The best "boring" book I've ever read/listened to

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