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Nevil Shute’s On the Beach is, perhaps, one of the most depressing books that I have ever read. Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was a masterful piece of literature that was well written, with characters that were among some of the most real that I have found in the pages of any book. But, sweet fancy Moses!, what a downer of an ending. However, Shute’s skill with words is on a level that is difficult to find in modern literature. This is an enlightening book, and one cannot help but feel for these persons that Shute has brought to life, especially the tragic American submarine captain Dwight Towers, who longing for his family is one of the most poignant emotions I have come across in any book to date. If I had one complaint about On the Beach (other than the Captain-Bring-Down of the ending), it is that Shute changes scenes and characters without so much as a “how do you do” so that the Reader oft times becomes confused when the author changes from the Naval Yards to the Holmes Homestead without so much as a paragraph break. I think that what I found to be the most disturbing image of the entire book was as the submarine U.S.S. Scorpion is on its second mission into the wasted Northern Hemisphere and sails into Washington State’s Puget Sound, finding the cities of Edmonds and Seattle desolate and empty (that may be redundant, but I don’t care). I was stricken by this portion of this book because I resided in Seattle for a little over three years, and during that time I came to love that city very much, and have missed it dearly since moving here to Utah. Reading this particular passage in Shute’s book and imagining that beautiful city empty and broken, made me feel depressed and miss Seattle immensely. Well, with that said, I must also say that this is a fascinating book, that despite the depressing ending, is a marvelous piece of writing.
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On the Beach by Nevil Shute
hero120499, June 11, 2008
Nevil Shute’s On the Beach is, perhaps, one of the most depressing books that I have ever read. Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was a masterful piece of literature that was well written, with characters that were among some of the most real that I have found in the pages of any book. But, sweet fancy Moses!, what a downer of an ending. However, Shute’s skill with words is on a level that is difficult to find in modern literature. This is an enlightening book, and one cannot help but feel for these persons that Shute has brought to life, especially the tragic American submarine captain Dwight Towers, who longing for his family is one of the most poignant emotions I have come across in any book to date. If I had one complaint about On the Beach (other than the Captain-Bring-Down of the ending), it is that Shute changes scenes and characters without so much as a “how do you do” so that the Reader oft times becomes confused when the author changes from the Naval Yards to the Holmes Homestead without so much as a paragraph break. I think that what I found to be the most disturbing image of the entire book was as the submarine U.S.S. Scorpion is on its second mission into the wasted Northern Hemisphere and sails into Washington State’s Puget Sound, finding the cities of Edmonds and Seattle desolate and empty (that may be redundant, but I don’t care). I was stricken by this portion of this book because I resided in Seattle for a little over three years, and during that time I came to love that city very much, and have missed it dearly since moving here to Utah. Reading this particular passage in Shute’s book and imagining that beautiful city empty and broken, made me feel depressed and miss Seattle immensely. Well, with that said, I must also say that this is a fascinating book, that despite the depressing ending, is a marvelous piece of writing.(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)