On the Beach - Nevil Shute

"Hide on the promenade

Etch a postcard : 

'How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here'

In the seaside town

That they forgot to bomb

Come, come, come, nuclear bomb

Everyday is like Sunday

Everyday is silent and grey"

(Everyday is like Sunday - Morrissey )  

   The above is a verse from one of my favourite melancholy songs. The total bleakness that this song boasts of, is tantamount to its success.I liked the song so much that I recently ventured to find out the background for this song - and I stumbled upon a novel that had inspired it. ( My only previous outing with Shute was "A Town called Alice", which I read a good 20 years or so back, on the insistence of a friend.)

We are presented with a world which is fast losing its total human population. At the start of the novel, the Australians have six months to live, as a series of nuclear bombs which had been dropped in the Northern Hemisphere, spreads down under due to how pressure equator works.  The Northern hemisphere is believed to be totally devoid of life, and what we see is how people in Melbourne and there about face up and live up their remaining days, knowing that there is no way out. This is the back ground of the novel, and the beauty of the novel is how people accept their fate and spend those last days. It can be termed dystopian due to the undesirable ending, but what we see here are a set of people who try to make the best of what they have for everyone in the remaining days - largely. 

There is only way to live. And that is with hope, irrespective of how hopeless reality is. As such we see young couples planning their infant duties future, we see young couples planning their garden for the next summer ( a summer that they know in their  minds that they will never see); 

“They won’t be here in six months’ time. I won’t be here. You won’t be here. They won’t want any vegetables next year.”

Dwight stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the blue sea, the long curve of the shore. “So what?” he said at last. “Maybe they don’t believe it. Maybe they think that they can take it all with them and have it where they’re going to, someplace. I wouldn’t know.” He paused. “The thing is, they just kind of like to plan a garden. Don’t you go and spoil it for them, telling them they’re crazy.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” She stood in silence for a minute. “None of us really believe it’s ever going to happen— not to us,” she said at last.

Shute, Nevil. On the Beach (Kindle Locations 1752-1758).

We meet a submarine captain  buying gifts for his wife and two kids in Connecticut, so that he can give them when he sees them ( not withstanding that there is no life in the U.S.), we see officers being faithful to their wives fully aware that their wives are no more - for the realisation that there is no one to return to is not bearable, and they fore go their chances in a foreign land.

This book was written in 1957. Shute has done a fair job in presenting the upcoming Armageddon. While it is near impossible to write a review without spoiler for this book, the beauty of this book is not in the story line per se, but in the mind frames of the characters as they await their end. It is by large a civilized society, and I couldn't but help thinking how our people would've reacted in such a situation. Yes, a free for all, with no respect for law and order would've made it a very dangerous place. Yet, there is a sense of a little prude behaviour - or behaviour that is too good to be true, in the circumstances even for Australia, I felt. If the community as a whole was mature to a level, then this behaviour could be expected. There is some detailing on how the nuclear war fair came about, as well as finer detail on submarine life. This makes the narration more plausible. Yet, for all its beauty there is an old age feel about the whole narration. Given that 1984 was written in 1949, and that has a dystopian environment so menacing for all its natural  feel, I couldn't help but wonder if Shute's style has had an effect on a less than believable human behaviour. Am more inclined to believe this, since I recall that most characters in "A town called Alice" were well behaved and not wont sexual excesses, despite being cruel in warfare.
I have no hesitation in recommending this book, to anyone who has enjoyed 1984, The Animal Farm or The Handmaid's Tale. The pure human mindset and the nuance of how a man or woman likes to go out, when he or she has to leave this world, but with a choice gives rise to an existential thought. I couldn't help but wonder if it is an extension of  a generation of Sisyphus' believing them happy. After all, you have the option of living your last days as you think it suits you best.