on the beach book reviews

On the Beach

Nevil shute.

296 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1957

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”In the last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river… This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper. T. S. Eliot

“It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

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ON THE BEACH

by Nevil Shute ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 24, 1957

In 1939 Nevil Shute wrote a horrifyingly prophetic book, , which made the life of the average citizen under bombardment only too real, as time proved. In 1954 Philip Wylie wrote a grisly story of what the future might hold for an unprepared citizenry in Tomorrow. And now comes Shute again with a portrait of the last stand of mankind against an enemy over which there was no control- radiation, gradually encompassing and destroying the world. There has been a brief atomic war, launched by two nations and resulting in mutual destruction within a brief month. But then the real catastrophe comes, as the death dealing effects encompass the living world. In Australia, where only the upper fringes so far lie within the circle, the people of the community of which he writes have exact scientific knowledge of when their doom will descend. To some it brings cessation from all activities; to others, indulgence in excesses of one kind or another; to still others, refusal to face the inevitability of the end, and a grim determination to go on as if next Spring would find the blooming of bulbs planted in the Fall — and they there to see it. In the harbor is the one known surviving submarine of the U S A Navy. This submarine is sent on an expedition to determine through periscope and radar, what is behind the continued sending from a Puget Sound post. One sailor jumps ship- and goes back to his home. He is not allowed back, because of contamination; but his report is part of the record. The dead- caught in their daily round of living; no sign of life. But he has chosen. He prefers to meet his end, fishing familiar waters of his youth. The people of the story are very real; their tragic awareness becomes the possession of the reader. One hopes- to the end- for a miracle. But there is no miracle. It is an obsessive, nightmarish book, the more so because it is written on almost a deadpan level of narration, deliberately shorn of histrionics.

Pub Date: July 24, 1957

ISBN: 0307473996

Page Count: 250

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1957

SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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BOOK REVIEW

by Nevil Shute

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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by Max Brooks

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BOOK TO SCREEN

THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM

From the remembrance of earth's past series , vol. 1.

by Cixin Liu ; translated by Ken Liu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2014

Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.

Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.

In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.

Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014

SCIENCE FICTION

More In The Series

by Cixin Liu ; translated by Ken Liu

by Cixin Liu ; translated by Joel Martinsen

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by Cixin Liu ; translated by Various

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On the Beach

By nevil shute, part of vintage international, category: literary fiction | science fiction.

Feb 09, 2010 | ISBN 9780307473998 | 5-3/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9780307473998 --> Buy

Feb 09, 2010 | ISBN 9780307476982 | ISBN 9780307476982 --> Buy

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Feb 09, 2010 | ISBN 9780307473998

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About On the Beach

Nevil Shute’s most powerful novel—a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication—is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world. After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. Both terrifying and intensely moving, On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.

"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off." THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end….

Also in Vintage International

About Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899 in Ealing, London. He studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. Following his childhood passion, he entered the fledgling aircraft industry as an aeronautical engineer working to develop airships and, later, airplanes. In… More about Nevil Shute

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“The most haunting evocation we have of a world dying of radiation after an atomic war.” — The New York Times    “The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off.”  — San Francisco Chronicle “A novelist of intelligent and engaging quality, deservedly popular. . . . Nevil Shute was, in brief, the sort of novelist who genuinely touches the imagination and feeling.” — The Times (London)

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Karissa Reads Books

Book Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute

On the Beach had long been on my TBR list. Choosing it now in the midst of a global pandemic added a strange layer to my reading.

The story takes place in Australia, a few months after a brief global war has destroyed the planet. Atomic and cobalt bombs set off around the world have led to the deaths of millions by radiation poisoning. North America, Europe, and Asia are wiped out and the radiation is steadily creeping toward the Southern Hemisphere. In Australia, the population knows that they have approximately six months to live and so the novel is a fascinating study into human nature and what it might be like to live at the end of the world. The world has ended with a bang but these characters are there to witness the last whimpers.

We have Peter and Mary, a young couple with a baby daughter, attempting to live their lives as normally as possible. They go so far as planning out their garden for the next spring, a season they will never live to see. It’s their way of coping with a death that is out of their control.

Mary looked at her gratefully. “Well, that’s what I think. I mean, I couldn’t bear to – to just stop doing things and do noting. You might as well die now and get it over.” Moira nodded. “If what they say is right, we’re none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”

It’s heartbreaking and a little inspiring to see them planning for their future until the very last moment.

Moira is a friend of theirs who takes a more nihilistic approach to the end of the world. She drinks heavily and indulges herself in whatever way she chooses at the moment, believing her choices no longer matter. Peter is a naval officer, assigned as a liaison officer to an American submarine that has ended up stuck in Melbourne. Peter invites the American captain, Dwight, home for a weekend and invites Moira along to entertain him, worried that Dwight will be saddened at the sight of ordinary home life. Dwight and Moira strike up an unexpected friendship that begins to change the way Moira lives out her last few months.

Dwight is an interesting character. An American from the East Coast, he has a wife and two children that are, undoubtedly, dead from radiation. In order to function however, he continues to think of them as alive and waiting for his return in September. (This is the estimated date of the radiation poisoning reaching Melbourne.) He even goes so far as carefully choosing out presents to bring home to them. He is a by-the-book leader, following the rules strictly until the very end because he believes in the structures of society and he wants to be reunited with his family knowing he did everything right.

While the crew of the submarine, including Peter and Dwight, do make some exploratory missions into the radioactive zones, including one where they venture as far as Seattle to investigate a radio signal, this is not where the real action of the novel exists. If you read On the Beach expecting an exciting, apocalyptic story, you’ll likely be disappointed. This is a novel about people and about the ways they might react, knowing the world ends. Despite the characters being Australian and American it had a very stiff-upper-lip British feel to me. There is drunkenness in the street and people stop going to work but for the most part society continues to function normally. There doesn’t seem to be a significant increase in looting or violence. Looking at the world as it is around me today, I wonder if this is a realistic portrayal or idealism on Shute’s part.

That said, as we are currently living through a time like no other, I found a lot in the novel to recognize. People do keep living their lives in the midst of turmoil. We do plan for the future, even when that future is uncertain. We are capable of great good in the midst of pain. I don’t know if Shute’s version is accurate but it’s one I would want to aspire to.

She said furiously, “Don’t you know ?” “No, I don’t,” he replied. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the world before.”

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15 thoughts on “Book Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute”

This sounds so interesting! I love apocalyptic stories that use the situation as setup to really dive into the characters.

It’s really good! I’ve been wanting to read it for years now and it exceeded expectations.

Reading it a few months ago before the pandemic, I wondered even then if we would behave with as much dignity in similar circumsances. In some ways I’ve been impressed by our response and in other ways deeply depressed. I do wonder if people back then would have acted so differently to us, and I suspect they might. Society was much more important than the individual back then, and we’d all just come through the war so were used to suffering and discipline. I often wonder if the decadent, rather hedonistic, west could actually fight a war now as we did in the ’40s. I hope never to find out…

That’s an interesting point and one I hadn’t considered. That Shute wrote the book coming out of a world war where people had come together for the greater good. In many ways, I think we’re seeing that in our worldwide lockdowns but of course there are dissenters and selfish people. I do have a hard time believing there wouldn’t be more violence than what Shute portrays.

Locally, our provincial health officer (who is the one making the decisions around COVID-19 and lockdowns etc here) has said that they have found the best way to get people to comply with regulations is not law enforcement or threat of punishment but to remind people that their actions can help others and are protecting those around them. I found that quite inspiring.

Yes, that’s how they’ve been trying to get us all to wear masks here – for the protection of others rather than ourselves. If my supermarket is anything to go by (the only place I’m allowed to go!), the response is patchy…

I’d say about a third of people around here are wearing masks in stores. And at least half of them move them around and touch them while wearing them. The message around masks here has been very inconsistent. It’s basically, You don’t have to wear them but maybe you should except it probably won’t make a difference anyway.

Although I don’t drink and have never done drugs in my life, I get the feeling I’d be the lady seeking out some kind of psychedelics if we had six months to go. I’m not sure this would be the right book for me right now, but I can see from your review what a lot of tenderness this book has.

I have a feeling I would be Mary – maybe not gardening, but insisting on living my normal life as if nothing had changed. Shute doesn’t do a great job of portraying Peter and Mary as parents (he consistently refers to the baby as “it”) but he does show some of the heartbreak decisions they have to make at the end. In a strange way, it’s an inspiring book but I understand not wanting to read it right now.

Wait, the narrator calls the baby “it,” or the father does? I could understand the father slipping because he’s trying to distance himself from this child that will die, but not the narrator. That’s odd.

The third person narrator does. The only thing I can guess is that Shute wasn’t really a family man but wikipedia tells me he had 2 daughters!

The thought of this book gives me chills! And Dwight, what a heartbreaking character, just thinking of him makes my heart ache a little ;(

It’s both heartbreaking and hopeful. It’s a situation you hope we’ll never see but if we do, I hope we all respond the way these characters do.

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On the Beach by Nevil Shute (book review)

by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2020 | Book reviews , Books , Global climate change , History , Reflections , World history | 0 comments

It’s worth a second read…

Book review:, on the beach.

by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)

New York: Vintage International, Vintage Books, 1957

I could not read On the Beach again without taking on some of the terminal burden of the characters. I awakened some of my disturbing memories ( Weltschmerz , perhaps) of reading it the first time, almost 60 years ago.

Maybe you think you know the story line: in the aftermath of worldwide nuclear destruction, an inescapable deadly radioactive miasma is finally devastating Australia. The land down under is the last refuge of human beings on the planet.

All of them know they’re going to die in a couple months. Many of them choose to live as if they don’t know it.

The reader doesn’t need to apply much imagination. On the Beach is a baldly powerful chronicle of the unyielding imperatives of human nature, including the impulse to work side by side with someone you love, planting a garden, hoping to share a rich crop next year, ignoring the darkness in the northern sky.

Nevil Shute’s story is not out of date.

I desperately fear that my grandchildren may be re-reading this book as they survive in the hills, trying to ignore the advancing seas below.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER ONE Lieutenant-Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy woke soon after dawn. He lay drowsily for a while, lulled by the warm comfort of Mary sleeping beside him, watching the first light of the Australian sun upon the cretonne curtains of their room. He knew from the sun's rays that it was about five o'clock: very soon the light would wake his baby daughter Jennifer in her cot, and then they would have to get up and start doing things. No need to start before that happened; he could lie a little longer. He woke happy, and it was some time before his conscious senses realised and pinned down the origin of this happiness. It was not Christmas, because that was over. He had illuminated the little fir tree in their garden with a string of coloured lights with a long lead to the plug beside the fireplace in the lounge, a small replica of the great illuminated tree a mile away outside the Town Hall of Falmouth. They had had a barbecue in the garden on the evening of Christmas Day, with a few friends. Christmas was over, and this-his mind turned over slowly-this must be Thursday the 27th. As he lay in bed the sunburn on his back was still a little sore from their day on the beach yesterday, and from sailing in the race.. He would do well to keep his shirt on today. And then, as consciousness came fully to him, he realised that of course he would keep his shirt on today. He had a date at eleven o'clock in the Second Naval Member's office, in the Navy Department up in Melbourne. It meant a new appointment, his first work for five months. It could even mean a seagoing job if he were very lucky, and he ached for a ship again. It meant work, anyway. The thought of it had made him happy when he went to sleep, and his happiness had lasted through the night. He had had no appointment since he had been promoted lieutenant-commander in August and in the circumstances of the time he had almost given up hope of ever working again. The Navy Department, however, had maintained him on full pay throughout these months, and he was grateful to them. The baby stirred, and started chuntering and making little whimpering noises. The naval officer reached out and turned the switch of the electric kettle on the tray of tea things and baby food beside the bed, and Mary stirred beside him. She asked the time, and he told her. Then he kissed her, and said, "It's a lovely morning again." She sat up, brushing back her hair. "I got so burned yesterday. I put some calamine stuff on Jennifer last night, but I really don't think she ought to go down to the beach again today." Then she, too, recollected. "Oh Peter, it's today you're going up to Melbourne, isn't it?" He nodded. "I should stay at home, have a day in the shade." "I think I will." He got up and went to the bathroom. When he came back Mary was up, too; the baby was sitting on her pot and Mary was drawing a comb through her hair before the glass. He sat down on the edge of the bed in a horizontal beam of sunlight, and made the tea. She said, "It's going to be very hot in Melbourne today, Peter. I thought we might go down to the club about four, and you join us there for a swim. I could take the trailer and your bathers." They had a small car in the garage, but since the short war had ended a year previously it remained unused. However, Peter Holmes was an ingenious man and good with tools, and he had contrived a tolerable substitute. Both Mary and he had bicycles. He had built a small two-wheeled trailer using the front wheels of two motor bicycles, and he had contrived a trailer hitch on both Mary's bicycle and his own so that either could pull this thing, which served them as a perambulator and a general goods carrier. Their chief trouble was the long hill up from Falmouth. He nodded. "That's not a bad idea. I'll take my bike and leave it at the station." "What train have you got to catch?" "The nine-five." He sipped his tea and glanced at his watch. "I'll go and get the milk as soon as I've drunk this." He put on a pair of shorts and a singlet and went out. He lived in the ground floor flat of an old house upon the hill above the town that had been divided into apartments; he had the garage and a good part of the garden in his share of the property. There was a verandah, and here he kept the bicycles and the trailer. It would have been logical to park the car under the trees and use the garage, but he could not bring himself to do that. The little Morris was the first car he had ever owned, and he had courted Mary in it. They had been married in 1961 six months before the war, before he sailed in H.M.A.S. Anzac for what they thought would be indefinite separation. The short, bewildering war had followed, the war of which no history had been written or ever would be written now, that had flared all round the northern hemisphere and had died away with the last seismic record of explosion on the thirty-seventh day. At the end of the third month he had returned to Williamstown in Anzac on the last of her fuel oil while the statesmen of the southern hemisphere gathered in conference at Wellington in New Zealand to compare notes and assess the new conditions; had returned to Falmouth to his Mary and his Morris Minor car. The car had three gallons in the tank; he used that unheeding, and another five that he bought at a pump, before it dawned upon Australians that all oil came from the northern hemisphere. He pulled the trailer and his bicycle down from the verandah on to the lawn and fitted the trailer hitch; then he mounted and rode off. He had four miles to go to fetch the milk and cream, for the transport shortage now prevented all collections from the farms in his district and they had learned to make their own butter in the Mixmaster. He rode off down the road in the warm morning sunlight, the empty billies rattling in the trailer at his back, happy in the thought of work before him. There was very little traffic on the road. He passed one vehicle that once had been a car, the engine removed and the windscreen knocked out, drawn by an Angus bullock. He passed two riders upon horses, going carefully upon the gravel verge to the road beside the bitumen surface. He did not want one; they were scarce and delicate creatures that changed hands for a thousand pounds or more, but he had sometimes thought about a bullock for Mary. He could convert the Morris easily enough, though it would break his heart to do so. He reached the farm in half an hour, and went straight to the milking shed. He knew the farmer well, a slow speaking, tall, lean man who walked with a limp from the Second World War. He found him in the separator room, where the milk flowed into one churn and the cream into another in a low murmur of sound from the electric motor that drove the machine. "Morning, Mr. Paul," said the naval officer. "How are you today?" "Good, Mr. Holmes." The farmer took the milk billy from him and filled it at the vat. "Everything all right with you?" "Fine. I've got to go up to Melbourne, to the Navy Department. I think they've got a job for me at last." "Ah," said the farmer, "that'll be good. Kind of wearisome, waiting around, I'd say." Peter nodded. "It's going to complicate things a bit if it's a seagoing job. Mary'll be coming for the milk, though, twice a week. She'll bring the money, just the same." The farmer said, "You don't have to worry about the money till you come back, anyway. I've got more milk than the pigs will take even now, dry as it is. Put twenty gallons in the creek last night-can't get it away. Suppose I ought to raise more pigs, but then it doesn't seem worth while. It's hard to say what to do ..." He stood in silence for a minute, and then he said, "Going to be kind of awkward for the wife, coming over here. What's she going to do with Jennifer?" "She'll probably bring her over with her, in the trailer." "Kind of awkward for her, that." The farmer walked to the alley of the milking shed and stood in the warm sunlight, looking the bicycle and trailer over. "That's a good trailer," he said. "As good a little trailer as I ever saw. Made it yourself, didn't you?" "That's right." "Where did you get the wheels, if I may ask?" "They're motor bike wheels. I got them in Elizabeth Street." "Think you could get a pair for me?" "I could try," Peter said. "I think there may be some of them about still. They're better than the little wheels they tow more easily." The farmer nodded. "They may be a bit scarce now. People seem to be hanging on to motor bikes." "I was saying to the wife," the farmer remarked slowly, "if I had a little trailer like that I could make it like a chair for her, put on behind the push bike and take her into Falmouth, shopping. It's mighty lonely for a woman in a place like this, these days," he explained. "Not like it was before the war, when she could take the car and get into town in twenty minutes. The bullock cart takes three and a half hours, and three and a half hours back; that's seven hours for traveling alone. She did try to learn to ride a bike but she'll never make a go of it, not at her age and another baby on the way. I wouldn't want her to try. But if I had a little trailer like you've got I could take her into Falmouth twice a week, and take the milk and cream along to Mrs. Holmes at the same time." He paused. "I'd like to be able to do that for the wife," he remarked. "After all, from what they say on the wireless, there's not so long to go." The naval officer nodded. "I'll scout around a bit today and see what I can find. You don't mind what they cost?" The farmer shook his head. "So long as they're good wheels, to give no trouble. Good tyres, that's the main thing-last the time out. Like those you've got." The officer nodded. "I'll have a look for some today." "Taking you a good bit out of your way." "I can slip up there by tram. It won't be any trouble. Thank God for the brown coal." The farmer turned to where the separator was still running. "That's right. We'd be in a pretty mess but for the electricity." He slipped an empty churn into the stream of skim milk deftly and pulled the full churn away_ "Tell me, Mr. Holmes," he said. "Don't they use big digging machines to get the coal? Like bulldozers, and things like that?" The officer nodded. "Well, where do they get the oil to run those things?" "I asked about that once," Peter said. "They distil it on the spot, out of the brown coal. It costs about two pounds a gallon." "You don't say!" The farmer stood in thought. "I was thinking may be if they could do that for themselves, they might do some for us. But at that price, it wouldn't hardly be practical ..." Peter took the milk and cream billies, put them in the trailer, and set off for home. It was six-thirty when he got back. He had a shower and dressed in the uniform he had so seldom worn since his promotion, accelerated his breakfast, and rode his bicycle down the hill to catch the 8. 15 in order that he might explore the motor dealers for the wheels before his appointment. He left his bicycle at the garage that had serviced his small car in bygone days. It serviced no cars now. Horses stood stabled where the cars had been, the horses of the business men who lived outside the town, who now rode in in jodhpurs and plastic coats to stable their horses while they commuted up to town in the electric train. The petrol pumps served them as hitching posts. In the evening they would come down on the train, saddle their horses, strap the attache case to the saddle, and ride home again. The tempo of business life was slowing down and this was a help to them; the 5.3 express train from the city had been cancelled and a 4. I 7 put on to replace it. Peter Holmes travelled to the city immersed in speculations about his new appointment, for the paper famine had closed down all the daily newspapers and news now came by radio alone. The Royal Australian Navy was a very small fleet now. Seven small ships had been converted from oil burners to most unsatisfactory coal burners at great cost and effort; an attempt to convert the aircraft carrier Melbourne had been suspended when it proved that she would be too slow to allow the aircraft to land on with safety except in the strongest wind. Moreover, stocks of aviation fuel had to be husbanded so carefully that training programmes had been reduced to virtually nil, so that it now seemed inexpedient to carry on the Fleet Air Arm at all. He had not heard of any changes in the officers of the seven minesweepers and frigates that remained in commission. It might be that somebody was sick and had to be replaced, or it might be that they had decided to rotate employed officers with the unemployed to keep up seagoing experience. More probably it meant a posting to some dreary job on shore, an office job in the Barracks or doing something with the stores at some disconsolate, deserted place like Flinders Naval Depot. He would be deeply disappointed if he did not get to sea, and yet he knew it would be better for him so. On shore he could look after Mary and the baby as he had been doing, and there was now not so long to go. He got to the city in about an hour and went out of the station to get upon the tram. It rattled unobstructed through streets innocent of other vehicles and took him quickly to the motor dealing district. Most of the shops here were closed or taken over by the few that remained open, the windows still encumbered with the useless stock. He shopped around here for a time, searching for two light wheels in good condition that would make a pair, and finally bought wheels of the same size from two makes of motor cycle, which would make complications with the axle that could be got over by the one mechanic still left in his garage.

It’s summertime! Everybody do the popsicle dance! (That’s just a regular dance of your choosing, done while eating popsicles.) As readers, we all know that finding the perfect piece of beachside reading is essential. You want something fun and easy, light-hearted and captivating. You’ll find lists all over the web of books that are perfect […]

In keeping with the season, I—the agoraphobic bibliophile—was recently forced to leave the friendly confines of my home to travel to a local megamall to see my daughters’ holiday dance performances. The trip included a 30-minute white knuckle drive through a snowstorm, a nightmarish mall parking situation where a hostile woman actually got out of […]

Geeks are my people. Book geeks, mostly—spastic, obsessive, all-in types. Literary superfans know everything (about their chosen reads), and it’s an honor to geek at their feet. If you don’t have any superfan friends, pencil in making some as a New Year’s res—there’s nothing like a discussion with someone who truly cares about and knows […]

I know more than a few people who absolutely refuse to read genre novels that have been out for more than a few decades—if it’s not a new release, it’s just not important to them. I agree that there’s a rush that comes reading from a novel hot off the press, but I personally love […]

Though I’ve never lived near the ocean, I’ve had a long and personal relationship with the rocky shores of Lake Superior. Though it may not have tides, as North America’s largest body of fresh water, it has the moods and rages of an ocean: playful and quiet one day, murderous the next. My grandparents’ small […]

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On the Beach review – an achingly beautiful depiction of the end of the world

Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company The Picture of Dorian Gray director Kip Williams has taken a more simple approach with Nevil Shute’s novel and the result is stirring and sad

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I n 1957, Nevil Shute, the British aeronautical engineer, Naval Reserve officer and novelist, wrote of the end of all things as we know it in his novel On the Beach. In his version of Melbourne in 1963, nuclear war has wiped out signs of life in the northern hemisphere, and radiation poisoning is drifting on the wind towards the city. With only a few months to go and no way to save yourself, what matters most? Who do we become when the world changes? Can we stop a catastrophe, or do we lean into it?

Here in 2023, Tommy Murphy (ABC’s Significant Others, Holding the Man) has adapted the novel for the stage in a world that is especially sensitive to how close we are to the end. We have been buffeted by natural disasters brought on by the climate crisis; we have lived the eerie twilight of Covid-19 lockdowns; we are gripped by the horror of Russia-Ukraine war. We know very well the tension between destruction abroad and its delayed impact at home. Murphy’s play is still set in the 1960s, but it is suffused with our own dread and hopelessness; it is a much-needed vessel for our grief.

We first meet Peter (Ben O’Toole) and Mary (Michelle Lim Davidson) who look at the end differently, but for the same reason: they have a baby girl, and the loss of her future is unconscionable. Peter clings to hope that the world will right itself, while Mary is much more pragmatic. This is a welcome update from the novel, which dismisses women as unhelpful to their men in times of crisis, indulging in flights of fancy and denying hard truths. Murphy’s script, which blends lines from the book with a deeper and more nuanced exploration of character, is gripping.

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When Peter, a navy man, is drafted on to the submarine USS Scorpion for fact-finding, a jumbled transmission from Seattle becomes a promise of relief – but Mary can’t escape the practicalities of their fate. Scientist John Osborne (Matthew Backer) is more sceptical, brought onboard by the government to record the nuclear fallout. Later, we see how he’s coping with the promise of death – he’s bought a Ferrari and is planning to race it in an all-amateur Grand Prix that’s more of a death wish.

Dwight (Tai Hara), a captain and one of just a few Americans who escaped their country’s fate, is living in his own devastating denial, where his dead wife and children are still very present. Peter and Mary introduce him to their friend Moira (Contessa Treffone) in hopes of keeping him occupied. She’s a bright and thriving presence; their tender care for each other (Murphy’s script builds in more emotional complexity here too) creates space for them both to find some final moments of grace.

On the Beach is directed by Kip Williams, STC’s artistic director, who is best known for his cine-theatre approach to productions like The Picture of Dorian Gray, which played sell-out return seasons in Australia and is now heading to the West End with Succession’s Sarah Snook in the lead role. There are no cameras or video screens here: instead, Williams’ elegant, achingly beautiful production places people first, showcasing the vulnerability of bodies reaching for each other on an often spare stage.

Michael Hankin’s set design is evocative of time and space rather than demonstrative, and it gives us very real room to absorb the story. Grace Ferguson’s sound design is stirring and sad, and it dances with Damien Cooper’s lights, which capture something about late light, shadows and absence, making it feel all the more potent when our characters reach out for each other. A set piece is wheeled out to stand in as a pier but is later repurposed to represent Peter and Moira’s veranda and, later, the submarine; just like that, new worlds are summoned.

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Sometimes it is the simple theatrical techniques that are the most effective. Large sheets billow in the wind to suggest the threat in the air and it is as moving as poetry. Surprise costume changes and clever choreography transform one character into the ghost of another and it feels like a memory. One final, unexpected image on the stage, which shouldn’t be spoiled, is particularly arresting. Theatre’s aliveness is a gift, and this production of On the Beach is in love with life: the ways we connect, how hard we love, how desperately we try to make something of our time together – even when we know it all ends.

The play finds its way to the novel’s bleak final moments and it’s desperately sad, but it’s not desolate. There is love here, and community and compassion. This production is a hand reaching out for our own, a reminder that we are not yet done and, crucially, we are not alone.

STC’s production of On the Beach is on at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney until 12 August

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Monday, March 9, 2015

On the beach by nevil shute book review.

I read this book in the early seventies and loved it .is recommended it to many of my friends as a really good book to read....

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On The Beach

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Who is On The Beach?

Which verdict, on the beach customer ratings, what's on the beach like, should i book with on the beach.

Online travel agent (OTA) On the Beach started in 2004 and is a fly-and-flop holiday specialist that offers budget beach/resort holidays. It sells trips to sun-soaked islands around Europe as well as long-haul getaways to the Caribbean.

Find out more:  What is a package holiday and why should you book one?

It could be worth booking with On the Beach if you’re after a cheap and cheerful beach getaway. But these customer scores place it firmly in the lower half of the table of providers for all three holiday categories.

Using the table: Customer score: Based on a combination of overall satisfaction and how likely people are to recommend the company. In August 2022, we asked 8,361 Which? Connect panel members and the public to complete an online survey about their experiences of booking and going on holiday in the past two years. In September 2023 we asked 1,918 Which? Connect panel members about their experiences of an all-inclusive holiday.

On The Beach competes against companies like Love Holidays in the growing market of budget online travel agents.  It certainly offers a low cost option. According to our survey of over 20 beach/resort package holiday providers, there were only two competitors with a cheaper short haul average price than its £79 per night per person. 

On the Beach impressed with its family accommodation, scoring a full five stars for that category in our family holidays survey, with one customer saying 'The hotel was brilliant, food and facilities were excellent’ and another noted ‘we had a great holiday in a superb hotel’.

Other than that, On The Beach received a mixed bag of ratings. It only scored an average three stars for customer service for its beach/resort holidays and one customer claimed that 'staff were not helpful.’ It also only scored three stars for organisation of its family holidays. One customer complained about their trip being ‘generally disorganised’ with ‘poor communication.’

Given its prices, it may well have been hoping for a higher score for value for money than three stars. Those on all-inclusive holidays thought the included benefits only worthy of an average three stars. Food and drink was sometimes subject to restrictions, which is perhaps why On the Beach customers spent an average of £199 extra per week outside the resort. 

If cost is your main concern, you could potentially find a bargain with On The Beach. However, with an average three stars for customer service, you might be better off spending a bit more with Jet2 Holidays which got a better score for beach/resort holidays, all-inclusive holidays and family holidays.

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Opinion: The ideal beach read? It’s not what you’d expect

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I’ve been a reader for nearly all of my life, yet I always feel perplexed at the beginning of summer, when the term “beach reads” enters the chat. During the year’s colder months, bookworms are envisioned as contemplative folk who drink hot tea and snuggle up in leather-bound chairs with the complete works of the Brontë sisters. But as summer begins, our tea is supposed to become iced, our chairs foldable, and the Brontës are exchanged for something light, romantic, fizzy and fun.

Yet I seem to be off schedule. As a college professor, I prefer to dig into lighthearted reads during the school year, when I need a break from reality. The semester that just ended was especially challenging, so relaxing with rom-coms and other books often categorized as beach reads was just the kind of entertainment my brain deserved at the end of each day. I felt slightly out of the loop hearing other readers discuss the weighty books of the season, but I knew I needed the escape lighter books gave me.

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Yet as the sun begins to scorch, I find myself drawn to those heavier reads. Perhaps because I have more mental bandwidth, what I want as I huddle beneath a beach umbrella is an honest-to-goodness downer, something thick, well-written and very sad. I want to see tragic mistakes and learn meaningful lessons. In the summer, when it seems like other readers want books with a happy ending, I want to rue humanity’s foibles while walking along the shore … as I dig into a large ice cream cone.

I can trace this back to a summertime trip I took to London with my father when I was 21. On the flight from Pittsburgh, I dived into Jon Krakauer’s “ Into Thin Air ,” the deeply unsettling account of a 1996 tragedy on Mount Everest, which left five people dead and many others guilt-ridden. It was, as my students say, unputdownable, and I read into the night even after we checked into our hotel, thoroughly messing up my sleep schedule for the rest of the vacation.

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Groggy as I was, I couldn’t stop thinking about the terrible choices that the book described and how fragile life seemed in the wake of reading it. I felt chastened by the knowledge of how close we often are to ruin, which made the sights and sounds of my trip more vivid. The tragedies in the book gave me the sensation of somehow being more alive. And my hubris was checked. Let others climb mountains; I was happy to explore a decadent Eton Mess.

Since then, I’ve made a habit of reading downers in the summer. Dave Cullen’s astonishingly well-reported and chilling “ Columbine ” accompanied me on a Parisian jaunt. I took Sheri Fink’s “Five Days at Memorial,” a masterpiece about a hospital in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, with me on a family trip through the Maritime Provinces of Canada. I delved into Michael Shaara’s Gettysburg-set novel “The Killer Angels” on a beach vacation in Cape May, N.J., ruminating on Pickett’s Charge while I searched for sea glass.

Each of these books drew me in with their exhaustive research, deep knowledge of place and expert craftsmanship. And I learned! The facts of each tragedy, of course, but also about the darkness of the human soul and, in moments, the lights of hope that break through that cloud cover. While I didn’t envy those characters their calamities, I did feel grateful for coming as close as I could to witnessing what they had endured, and how (if) they survived. And then I left those worlds behind for the consolations of Skee-ball or barbecue.

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I realize now that my summer reads may be out of step with many others’, but we all are, I hope, transported by our picks, because that’s what good literature can do.

So this year I’ll be hunkering down on the beach with a book about the opioid crisis while others along the shore are reading celebrity memoirs and romance novels. But instead of letting my seasonal preferences make me feel like an outsider, perhaps I’ll take note of what my neighbors are reading and keep a list for the fall. Then, when another semester begins and my work life becomes more stressful, I’ll know exactly which book to escape into for fun and froth … as I pull my afghan up to my chin and take a sip of piping hot tea.

Shannon Reed is a professor and the director of undergraduate studies for the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. Her latest book is “ Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out .”

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On the Beach   Reviews

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I just cannot get hold of you your chat…

I just cannot get hold of you your chat thing is rubbish I want to speak to someone about my £100 you ow me !!!!!! Not the 100 in my on the beach account it’s another £100 compensation you PROMISED to pay it into my bank account in THREE days this was SIX MONTHS AGO !!!!!!!! I HAVE BOOKED ANOTHER HOLIDAY WITH YOU I WANT MY £100 !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon merriman 07970464974

Date of experience : 27 May 2024

Reply from On the Beach

Hi Simon. Thank you for your review. I am sorry to learn that you are unhappy with a refund of £100. Allow me to explain that I have checked your booking MYB13199936B and I was not able to find any £100 due unfortunately. This booking was paid £60 and nothing else. I was also not ale to find on your booking notes any mention that this is due. Then, I have checked your booking MYB13042453B and I can see that there is a credit of £100 that was overpaid. I have set the refund of £100 on this booking and this will be available for collection in 3 to 5 days in our website under "refunds". We’re sorry about this situation, we know it isn’t a nice one and we do hope we are able to get this sorted for you and keep you as a customer. Best regards-On the beach

If I could write zero stars I would

If I could write zero stars I would. Changed hotels, the payment should have been added to our instalments dates and instead they whipped a big sum out of my account with no warning. They then refunded me and set up an UNWANTED payment plan….which I now cannot get out it because you can’t speak to a human at ONTHEBEACH as they don’t have a phone number for the company. Just online bots…. Terrible terrible service

Date of experience : 29 May 2024

Good Afternoon Jade Thank you so much for reaching out to us I am so sorry to hear about the issues with your booking I can assure you we're here to help you , I've sent you a message via your booking to confirm just to assist you further and hopefully this well help you. If you head to manage via your booking and then over to send/receive messages we will be able to assist you. Kind Regards Andy M Customer Service On The Beach Trust Pilot Team

Pleasantly surprised

Impressed. They took two instalment payments when only 1 aproved in banking app. However they arranged a refund of extra payment quickly, no hassle via the Live chat facility. Pleasantly surprised.

Hi Eve 😁 Thank you so much for your review. We aim to make it easy to book through us. Just call us Booking Geniuses!! 😎 Kind Regards On The Beach 🌞

I go away in a few days

I go away in a few days, the new hotel we booked is not going to be open in time delayed 1month. No one has been in touch with us and can’t get to speak to anyone to change hotel so currently paid full amount and no hotel it’s stressful they should be a number to ring or why don’t they care we are going to be stranded with no accommodation

Hello there. Thank you for your review. I am sorry to learn that you were advised that your hotel will be closed. Allow me to explain that we, as well as many travel agencies worldwide, have a contract with the hotel and in case of any hotel closure, we should be advised as part of this contract. When a hotel is closed, or still not opened, this can be clearly checked on the hotel website directly as they have the obligation to advise guests and providers. If you are still worried about the hotel being closed, we can contact the hotel directly for you and confirm this directly with the provider. Unfortunately we receive every year information about hotels on social media that are not truth and that is the reason why we check with them. In addition, I do apologize for the wait to contact us via chat. Due to recent airline cancellations, we have received an unexpected number of passengers trying to contact us. If you still experience difficulties to contact us via live chat, you can send us a message via app and also social media and we will contact the hotel for you to get this sorted. If there is any issue with the hotel that will affect your holiday, you should be offered options. We’re sorry about this situation, we know it isn’t a nice one and we do hope we are able to get this sorted for you and keep you as a customer. Best regards-On the beach

i was very satisified with the customer…

i was very satisified with the customer service i was given by Kay s.. she was very helpful and guidied me in the right direction she was so helpful

Date of experience : 31 May 2024

I went on holiday

I went on holiday, i wrote my children's name down wrong, i notified them within the correct time frame, i received an email saying it would be changed. 2 days before flying i saw that it had not been changed. I then had to pay an extra £300 or they would not be able to get on the flight. Awful experience, we fllew in August on 22/06/2024 they sent an email acknowledging the the request and said " we've received your request, and will make the changes you requested within seven days"

Date of experience : 22 June 2023

Hi Serena, Thanks so much for taking the time to leave us this review - I am so sorry your experience has been negative so far! We would love to be able to restore your faith in us and improve your overall experience, so I have sent you a message on your manage booking area in hope we can help to resolve things for you. Thanks - Kirstie On The Beach

False Advertising

Booked this holiday through on the beach as they were offering free airport lounge passes with the booking, otherwise I would of booked the flights & hotel separate. Guess what... Surprise Surprise lounge was closed due to urgent maintenance.. funny that because I have seen a large number of other customers who also had this experience.. yes I know in your terms & conditions you take no responsibility as your only a third party.. however you shouldn't be advertising this perk when you regularly don't delivery. Its seems to me the lounge can just close when it wants and can play the urgent maintenance card so the customer has no come back which suits on-the-beach as they can play the terms and conditions card also GREAT TEAM WORK BOTH.... I didn't even receive an email to inform me it would be closed and spent 1/2 a hour trying to contact through phone 'gave up in the end' Shame on on-the-beach for advertising something they didn't delivery on. I sure on-the-beach will be get some sort of refund from the Aspire lounge I bet its not passed onto the customer.....

Date of experience : 23 May 2024

Laura H..... You are the best

Needed to change my holiday flights, dates and departure location, and can honestly say, these guys go the extra mile. Laura H went beyond the call of duty to help me. I can say enough, how good she was.

Hi Craig! Thank you so much for the amazing feedback! We'll let Laura know about it, it'll make her day. You're always the most welcome! Best Regards, Marcelo On the Beach

Help with Booking Ammendments

I had to change my booking and Alex was very helpful and even conscious of my departure timeframe in order to get it resolved quickly. Great customer service.

Date of experience : 30 May 2024

Dear Steven, Thank you for your 5 stars review. We are glad that you found the online chat helpful. Be assured that your kind words will be forwarded to Alex. We wish you a great time on your holidays! Kind regards Iara On the beach

Brilliant company to book your jollys…

Brilliant company to book your jollys with, everything went really smooth, first time holiday for years and then decided to go alone!! I was looked after from start to finish!

Hi Linda 😁 Thanks for your 5 ⭐star review, We're glad it was all so easy, now time to relax and have a well deserved brew! ☕ Many Thanks Kay On The Beach 🌴

Great way to book a holiday

The website good to use and made our booking easy. It gave us a choice of flights unlike most holiday companies and they confirmed everything quickly. Also it allows us to pay the cost off over 3 months.

Hi Ray! Thank you for your feedback. You're always the most welcome! Kind Regards, Marcelo On the Beach

Just booked with On the beach.

Just booked with On the beach. Great informative website and great price. Really good communication after booking too, can't wait to go.

Hi Ian! Thanks for the 5* review! You're always the most welcome! Best Regards, Marcelo On the Beach

Change of hotel with very few alternatives offered.

Got told 3 weeks before holiday that hotel we’d booked wasn’t going to be ready to open, so was offered a 1 star upgrade into a hotel 30 mins further away than original hotel, which seemed nice but has a pool and spa that our 9 year old is not allowed to use?!!! We asked for other alternatives, one more was offered which was worse than original hotel, so begrudgingly had to accept the alternative offered. Let’s hope the 1 star upgrade was worth it!!

Date of experience : 22 April 2024

Hi Louise, Thanks for taking the time to leave a review, we are really sorry you have been left disappointed. it does appear we were informed of a delayed opening with your original hotel booked, something which we have no control over, should this happen we would offer alternative accommodation of a similar standard and type to that originally booked and/or cancellation of the accommodation booking without penalty. I can see the hotel offered is 4* rating as opposed to your original 3* hotel booked. Whilst I do understand the frustration I can see you have agreed to accept the alternative offered and do wish you a lovely upcoming holiday with us. Should you have any issues upon arrival there is a 24h emergency In-Resort number listed on your paperwork. I am sorry for any inconvenience caused and do hope this doesn't deter you from booking with us again in the future. Kind regards - Sammy

Airport lounge con

Booked a holiday with on the beach when seen free airport lounge offer with 4 star hotels , received lounge reservation for 05.00 as we was flying at 06.00 this gave us no time in the lounge, when we complained we was informed that due to opening times at the lounge this was the earliest time available, we checked at airport and discovered the lounge opened at 04.00 we informed on the beach they said they would cancel and get us in for 04.00 they contacted us 15 minutes later informing us no places was available at that time and we would receive £ 20 each instead I went on airport site and got 2 places for 04.00 and informed them they wasn't telling the whole truth as there was places available, they informed me there was nothing they could do about it I would book with on the beach again as they are very misleading

Hi Paul. Thank you for your review. I am sorry to learn that you are unhappy with your lounge time. Allow me to explain that as a travel agency, we have a limited number of places in each lounge as we are not the lounge. We also have a limited time in the lounge and this may be anything between 1:30 to 30 minutes before departure. The lounge is offered at no cost to the passenger and since the passenger is required to check in 2 hours before the flight, we are unable to offer extended period of times. The lounge is offered so the our passengers can have a quick drink or breakfast if they wish before boarding. Finally, the lounge itself will have a different availability, opening times and waiting times than a travel agency if the passengers book the lounge with them directly. We’re sorry about this situation, we know it isn’t a nice one and we do hope you were able to get this sorted. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards-On the beach

Absolutely shocking

Absolutely shocking ! My flights have been changed I was advised by on the beach to call the airline who offered me a refund but then had to back track as someone from on the beach accepted the flight changes on my behalf. I cannot make the new flight times and on the beach won’t help me my holiday is next week and I no longer can go away on the holiday or am I apparently entitled to any help or refund until they review my compliant after 28 days ! I go away supposedly on the 8/06 and am waiting to know if I will be refunded and be able to re book a holiday that I am actually able to go on like the one I originally booked. On the beach have made a mistake by accepting my flight change without telling me and now expect me to wait until they investigate my complaint!

On the Beach Advisor - Customer Service

Chatted with On the Beach advisor Andy M for a flight query only a week before flying out. Was top service and my query was answered and reassured. Customer service at its highest!

Hi Aaron! We're always here to make your hols the smoothest it can be, always! Thanks for your feedback, Andy will be thrilled to learn about it! Best Regards, Marcelo On the Beach

Ok for booking, trying to speak to somebody or make any changes is damn near impossible and costs an absolute fortune. Another booking cost upwards of 100 pounds and was told that the hotel refused to change the names however i contacted hotel directly and they changed the names for free within an hour of emailing. useless money grabbers

Date of experience : 24 May 2024

Hi Dale, Thanks for taking the time to leave a review, I am really sorry we have not met your expectations so far. I am keen to try and turn things around for you therefore I have sent a message via your 'Manage Booking' account in order to discuss things further should you need any assistance. Kind regards - Sammy

Smooth & easy process booking our…

Smooth & easy process booking our family jollies, affordable deposit, the emails make me chuckle the team are amazing with a great sense of humour and get me that little more excited for the holiday and comfortable knowing we're going to be well looked after through the process.. on the beach are going to be my go to for every holiday in the future now. 😁🌞

Date of experience : 28 May 2024

Hi Joanna! We're so thrilled to learn we've been able to make things even more enjoyable for you! Thank you so much for the lovely review! We can't wait to see you back. Best Regards, Marcelo On the Beach

I just arrived at my accommodation in…

I just arrived at my accommodation in Lanzarote. They know nothing about the £1200 booking I paid to Onthebeach. Absolutely scandalous. Never again and steer clear. This company is obviously struggling and will go bust soon

Hi Paul Thank you for taking the time to leave us a review Please allow me to apologise for any issues with your hotel booking - I have tried to give you a call but I am afraid that there was no answer I have sent you a message on your On the Beach with some more information and if you need anything else please let us know All the best Joe - On the Beach

We are going in afternoon flight and…

We are going in afternoon flight and been emailed to say we won't get the vip lounge again this is just a ploy to get you book with them I even paperwork on the last one

Date of experience : 26 May 2024

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3 Sultry, Summery New Thrillers

If your idea of a beach read involves murder, we’ve got you covered.

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By Sarah Lyall

This month’s thrillers are full of women grappling with misdeeds — in some cases their own, but mostly those of men.

We start in Dublin, where Lou Manson, a college professor, is trying as hard as she can to forget the awful thing that happened more than 30 years ago. But when a figure from the past suddenly emerges, it all comes flooding back. “It only takes a second for the terror and guilt to find me,” she says.

Fiona McPhillips’s tense and unsettling WHEN WE WERE SILENT (Flatiron, 307 pp., $28.99), is about sexual predators and the wall of silence that often protects them, particularly in a place in thrall to the all-powerful Catholic Church. It’s also about how hard it can be for victims to find peace.

Alternating between the present and the past, when Lou was 18 years old and a wrong-side-of-the-tracks scholarship student at Highfield Manor, a snooty all-girls school in Dublin, the story presents a compelling portrait of a society animated more by what is concealed than what is disclosed. Back then, Lou’s efforts to expose the sexual abuses of the school’s P.E. teacher — while dealing with her alcoholic mother and her illicit passion for a girl in her class, Shauna — ended in tragedy.

Years later, a new allegation at Highfield, against a different teacher, stirs up painful memories. It also sends Lou on a hunt for her long-lost friend, whose life took its own sharp turn decades earlier and who has since mysteriously dropped out of sight. “Only Shauna ever knew the truth about that night,” Lou says. The book doesn’t come to a boil until the end, but the reality is even more shocking than we imagined.

Manako Kajii — or Kajimana, as the papers call her — is in a Tokyo prison, having been convicted of killing three of her lovers after cooking them fabulous meals, but all anyone wants to talk about is her weight. “I bet Kajimana eats an absolute ton!” declares one of the clueless men in Asako Yuzuki’s BUTTER (Ecco, 452 pp., $30). “It’s a miracle that someone that fat could con so many people into wanting to marry her!”

A best seller in Japan and now deftly translated into English by Polly Barton, “Butter” is based on the real case of the so-called Konkatsu Killer, who was convicted of killing three would-be husbands and is currently on death row in Japan. Yuzuki has turned it into not just a fascinating psychological puzzle but also a damning indictment of Japanese misogyny and fatphobia. It has the side effect of making the reader very hungry.

Sent to talk to Kajii in prison, Rika Machida — a female journalist at a male-dominated magazine — is repelled and fascinated by her bossiness and lack of remorse. Kajii orders Rika to eat some delicious food, starting with rice with butter and soy sauce, and describe it to her as a condition of a proper interview.

“Superior-quality butter should be eaten when it’s still cold and hard, to truly luxuriate in its texture and aroma,” Kajii says. “It will begin to melt almost immediately with the heat of the rice, but I want you to eat it before it melts fully. Cool butter and warm rice.”

Rika’s investigation is unexpected and exciting, and allows her to enjoy food — and to gain weight without guilt — for the first time.

“She put a hand to her stomach, and tried to listen calmly to her own desires, to what her body wanted,” Yuzuki writes. And then she eats.

For a novel with such a high body count, L.M. Chilton’s SWIPED (Scout Press, 294 pp., $27.99) is remarkably lighthearted. It begins in the hellscape of a “hen party,” as bachelorette parties are known in Britain, where the participants are drunkenly playing X-rated party games and the maid of honor, Gwen Turner, is hiding in the bathroom, trawling for dates on her phone.

“As you can see from the excellent selection of photos, he really enjoys laughing in various pubs with two to three different mates,” she remarks of one of the men who pop up.

By the low standards of the dating app world, he seems promising. But then he sends her an unsettling piece of news: A man she went on one bad date with recently is dead, and it looks like murder.

He’s just the first. The men from her last bunch of matches on the app — including Rob, “the handsy guy who wasn’t over his ex”; Freddie, who recounted in great detail the plot of a TV show that Gwen had already seen; and Josh, who accused her of being hormonal and declared, “No wonder you’re single!” — are all dead, too.

The book riffs amusingly not just on life as a singleton but also on cryptocurrency, algorithms, the pluses and minuses of female friendship and pre-wedding angst. The mystery in this “Bridget Jones”-lite novel is almost secondary. But it’s also urgent, because it becomes clear that Gwen is being framed for the murders, and she has to unveil the killer before it’s too late.

Sarah Lyall is a writer at large for The Times, writing news, features and analysis across a wide range of sections. More about Sarah Lyall

Beach house, check. Family drama, check. ‘Sandwich’ is that summer book.

Catherine Newman’s new novel is a relatable tale of a woman caught between the needs of her kids, her parents — and herself.

The sandwich Catherine Newman serves up in her new novel, “ Sandwich ,” is a classic one: grown kids on one side, aging parents on the other and 54-year-old narrator Rachel, a.k.a. “Rocky,” in the middle. As they do every year, three generations of Rocky’s family have decamped to Cape Cod for a week, a gathering made all the more special since son, Jamie, and daughter, Willa, no longer live at home, and their grandparents are becoming quite frail.

Newman’s last novel, the very moving “We All Want Impossible Things,” was a paean to friendship. Her new book practically glows with family feeling — “I’m drowning in love,” says Rocky at one point. “Sandwich” has much in common with Ann Patchett’s “Tom Lake,” though Patchett’s novel doesn’t have an older generation, a key element here.

The laughter begins on the first page, where we learn that Rocky is “long married to a beautiful man who understands between twenty and sixty-five percent of everything she says” — and the great lines and witty observations never stop. Many of them arise from the indignities of aging and menopause, which has left no part of Rocky’s physical and emotional being untouched.

“My hair! What on earth? It used to hang down in heavy, glossy waves, and now it sticks out of my head like a marshful of brittle autumn grasses. It is simultaneously coarse and weightless in a way that seems like an actual paradox, as if my scalp is extruding a combination of twine, nothing, and fine-grit sandpaper.”

Newman is fearless in her depiction of the physical and emotional indignities of getting older. Rocky’s fits of irrational rage often manifest in her relationship with her calm and kind husband, Nick. A typical moment occurs when the couple is in line at the bakery and Rocky gets mad at Nicky because he doesn’t know which pastry Rocky would choose. When she insists that in nearly 30 years she has never once chosen sweets for breakfast, he reminds her about the almond croissants she ordered in Paris. She grudgingly concedes his point but remains angry. The poor man realizes there is no course but apology. “I’m sorry I don’t know you better. In the bakery sense.”

As it turns out, there is more than baked goods involved, though it’s Rocky’s fault for having kept an important secret for many years. The week in Cape Cod probably wasn’t going to be all sunshine and rainbows, but Rocky’s miserable perseverating over something in her distant reproductive past feels a little out of place. Perhaps this is also occasioned by menopause, representing as it does the close of a chapter of life, but to this reader the whole thing felt a bit cooked-up.

Summer reading

The other stone in the shoe of the gentle plot is concern for the health of Rocky’s parents, which makes more sense. The depiction of Mort and Alice, their dialogue, their posture, their sleeping white heads on the pillow, their humor, is endearing. When Mom has a fainting spell at the beach and ends up briefly in the hospital, Rocky wonders if they’ll stay an extra day. “But my parents have a strict two-night policy. If they traveled sixty million miles to visit you on Mars, they’d bring Zabar’s whitefish salad in a cooler bag and they’d stay two nights.”

The abundance of love flourishing in Rocky’s family is refreshing and inspiring, but Newman is not afraid to go to the dark side of it. There was a time, Rocky recalls, when her children were small and she was half-mad with exhaustion and anxiety, and she ruminated on stories about women driving themselves and their children off cliffs or into oncoming traffic. “I thought, ruinedly, Yeah. I get that .” She wouldn’t have done it, she says, but understood why someone might. And then she continues, “I hope I wouldn’t have. I’m honestly not entirely sure.”

I imagine some readers will feel a little shock of gratitude upon reading this passage, and even more will embrace Rocky’s view of the meaning of life. At one point, she and Willa are in the laundromat when a child begins to cry because her beloved (smelly) snail shell has been taken away. After Willa calms her down, expressing empathy about having to abandon the dubious treasure, Rocky suggests this takeaway:

“And this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other , I know how you feel. To say, Same. To say, I understand how hard it is to be a parent, a kid. To say, Your shell stank and you’re sad. I’ve been there.”

Marion Winik, host of the NPR podcast “The Weekly Reader,” is the author of numerous books, including “First Comes Love” and “The Big Book of the Dead.”

By Catherine Newman

Harper. 240 pp. $26.99

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The Queen of the Beach Read Hangs Up Her Bikini

F OR NEARLY a quarter century, bestselling novelist Elin Hilderbrand has followed a highly effective work ritual: Pluck a two-piece bathing suit from the dresser and set out for the beach, where she writes stretches of her books longhand by the ocean. Hilderbrand has done this over the course of 30 novels, choosing her workwear from drawers stuffed with roughly 60 bikinis, an impressive book-to-bikini ratio.

But now the 54-year-old author is breaking with her own tradition. This summer marks the last time readers will receive what she calls the “same but different” novel they’ve come to expect from her every year, a salty beach read set in her beloved Nantucket, Massachusetts, wrapped in a sky-blue cover and released just in time for vacation.

“I have run out of really good ideas for Nantucket novels, and I don’t ever want to put out a product that is subpar,” Hilderbrand says in an interview at her Nantucket home in the dead of winter, cozying up in her living room near a pillow that reads “Tired AF.” “I want it to be interesting, and I don’t want to repeat myself, and I really feel like this is the time to go.”

A typical Hilderbrand page-turner sets a romantic narrative against real-world problems—illness, death, infidelity—all bound up in a rich summer community that offers both seaside beauty and social tension. Amid the blue hydrangeas and applause-worthy sunsets are opposing forces like the new rich and the old rich, the outsiders and the locals, the workers and the privileged.

Now she’s ending her run with the novel Swan Song, a title that works for storytelling purposes and also as a comment on her own run of summer books. It begins with erstwhile Nantucket police chief Ed Kapenash’s retirement dinner. The chief has trouble not working, especially when a rich couple’s personal concierge disappears off their luxury yacht. The book reunites some characters from past titles with a twist the author says will make her readers “freak out.”

But then that’s it. In 2021, Hilderbrand announced her retirement, surprising both her publisher and legions of fans. She is backing away from a book culture that she helped create. Summer novels have buoyed the publishing business and now are so ubiquitous they eclipse even the genre’s creators. These novels exist in a niche easily dismissed by the book-world elite.

In reality, her next move is less a retirement than a brand pivot. She’s thinking about taking on a work of literary fiction, though she’s not holding her breath that the critics will call it that. She’s deep into The Academy, one of a two-book series set in an elite boarding school with Gen Z dialogue written by her 18-year-old daughter. She has a new book podcast, a step toward what she hopes will turn into a role as a book influencer with a writerly perspective. And after decades of false starts, one of her novels is finally hitting the screen. The Netflix series The Perfect Couple, a splashy adaptation starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber set to arrive later this year, tells the story of a lavish Nantucket wedding that’s upended when a guest turns up dead.

There’s been what she calls “delayed gratification” over her career—she didn’t hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list until her 23rd book—and now the timing feels right.

“I’ve watched other people’s careers, and I’ve seen writers who have hit it really big early on and then every book they’re striving to get back to where they were at the beginning,” says Hilderbrand. “That has not been me, and I’m so glad that has not been me.”

HILDERBRAND IS BUSY in her kitchen, popping pieces of cara cara orange into her mouth—“I do feed myself as beautifully as I can”—and applying ChapStick between bites of a Brie and bologna sandwich. It’s 4:30 p.m. and she’s just now having lunch. She started the morning the way she always does: waking up under her sea-glass chandelier and promptly working out for three hours.

Seven days a week, she rides her Peloton bike, does a barre class and takes a slow jog for four or five miles. It’s a reflection of her discipline and also a coping mechanism: Whatever else she does that day, nothing, not even writing, will be as hard as all that exercise.

If there were a photo calendar of bestselling authors, Hilderbrand’s month would most definitely be July. She’s always got blond hair, which she says she’s never dyed, and a tan. In the summer, she wears bright patterns and jeweled flip-flops. In the winter, when she isn’t in St. John in the Caribbean, she is on Nantucket “looking like the Unabomber” under a parka. On this frigid day, she pads around her house barefoot with metallic nail polish that gives her toes an oyster-shell shimmer.

The author’s relationship with the beach began when she was 10. She left suburban Philadelphia to spend a month on Cape Cod swimming, catching hermit crabs and watching sunrises with her father, stepmother and siblings, including a twin brother six minutes her junior. The dad she has called “a magical parent” died in a plane crash when she was 16. The next summer, while stuck working in a Halloween costume factory in Pennsylvania, Hilderbrand vowed to spend the rest of her summers at the beach.

After publishing her first work of fiction in Seventeen magazine while an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, she spent a brief stint working in publishing and teaching in New York. She moved permanently to Nantucket in 1994.

Two years later, she was off to the prestigious creative-writing graduate program at the University of Iowa, whose ranks include winners of the Nobel Prize in literature and many National Book Awards. But the two years she was there were miserable. Her kind of fiction was not valued, she says, and her classmates and teachers ripped her stories to shreds. Competition was everywhere, and she felt out of place. Plus, she was nearly the only one from the group with Iowa football season tickets.

On advice from a therapist, to whom she cried weekly, she started writing about Nantucket. In 2000, when she was 31, her first novel, The Beach Club, got a shout-out in People magazine and promptly sold out its 2,500 copies. Her audience grew with each book, and she was hitting the bestseller lists by her late 30s. She continued to publish every year regardless of personal challenges, including while undergoing treatment for breast cancer. To date, her publisher says, she’s sold 23 million copies worldwide.

Now she has a multimillion-dollar home just outside downtown Nantucket. A black-and-white photograph of a slushy winter wave punctuates a living room of bright whites and ocean blues. Hilderbrand keeps out jars of candy for her kids, who are often at the house. Along with her daughter, she has two sons in their 20s, plus one son’s best friend she calls her fourth child, who lives at the house.

The author has dedicated Swan Song to her ex-husband, Chip Cunningham, who has served as the general manager of the island’s Cliffside Beach Club since the early days of their relationship. They married in 1995, when she was 26, and split up 18 years later.

The two remain friends. She calls him the “co-president of the corporation that we are running, which is the children and all their various blah blah blahs.” She dedicated her first book to him. Without Cunningham, she says, “none of all this would have started.”

“I’m not a person who sees divorce as a failure,” she says. “I see it as an evolution of the relationship.”

Hilderbrand goes out at least four nights a week in the summer. Drinking and parties are big in her novels. And they’re also a source of material.

The No. 1 question Hilderbrand gets asked about her books: Does she base her characters on Nantucketers in real life? The answer is mostly no, but she does scoop up the island’s gossip and repurpose it for her narratives. “Straight to the pages,” she likes to say. Nantucketers are loyal to her, though one once sniffed to the New York Post that she was too indiscreet for the island and would be better suited for the Hamptons, and that swingers in particular avoid her because they don’t want to show up in her books.

The author says she based a character on a real person only once, for her novel about a gossip called The Rumor, and the inspiration for the book never realized her role in it. “She read it,” she says. “No clue.”

Hilderbrand often avoids local boutiques because everybody knows who she is and she’ll feel guilty if she doesn’t buy anything. But repeated references to real Nantucket businesses in her fiction help fuel the island’s local shops, restaurants and late-night party spots. For the cold months when much of the island is closed, the Nantucket Hotel sells an Elin Hilderbrand weekend package to fans featuring book events, island tours and an evening of cocktails, dinner and dancing with the author. Hilderbrand says she does not make money from the event.

The writer believes the weekends (which will continue with less Hilderbrand under the guidance of her sister, Heather) are more about female bonding than celebrity-author encounters. “I keep trying to tell them,” Hilderbrand says, “it’s not really about me.”

Yes, but fans who snagged her cell number years ago? They’re still texting.

DESPITE THEIR LUSH SETTINGS and immersive storylines, Hilderbrand books have a snakebit history with screen adaptations. Hilderbrand went through half a dozen failed ventures, including one dating back to her first book and a deal gone bust with Beverly Hills, 90210 producer Aaron Spelling.

Then came a turning point: In 2017, HBO premiered the series Big Little Lies, based on the Liane Moriarty novel and starring actresses Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. “That’s when my phone starts to ring,” Hilderbrand says. The show became one of the first major streaming series based on contemporary women’s literature to hit it big. “The phenomenon of Big Little Lies cannot be understated,” she says.

The show picked up eight Emmys in its first season. After that, Hilderbrand headed straight to Hollywood to start meeting with streaming executives. She switched agents. All this time she’d been hoping for a movie contract to get her screen adaptations going when a streaming series turned out to be the answer. She now has deals around several titles, including The Five-Star Weekend, in development as a series at Peacock, and Summer of ’69, optioned for a limited series by the Sony label 3000 Pictures. Her four Winter Street books, set during the holidays on Nantucket, are with the independent studio Wiip. Meanwhile, Swan Song is under option with a not-yet-disclosed buyer, according to a person close to the deal, and a film adaptation of 28 Summers is in development at MRC.

At the start of the adaptation of The Perfect Couple, Hilderbrand met Kidman for dinner in a dark corner of the Nantucket waterfront restaurant Galley Beach, which inspired her 2005 novel, The Blue Bistro.

“She knows everyone in the area and was able to help make things happen, like finding the house where we filmed,” says Kidman. “That was all Elin.”

Hilderbrand didn’t write the TV scripts, but as an executive producer she has helped advise the limited series on the Nantucket material so it feels real. She argues that Hollywood never gets Nantucket right, partly because it’s hard to shoot. For this series, a helicopter swooped alongside the island ferry just for footage of the approach to the harbor, though much of the show was filmed in Chatham on Cape Cod. “Finally it’s going to be done correctly, and somebody took the time and energy and, most importantly, the budget—the money—to get it right,” she says.

The author recently visited the set of The Perfect Couple for the rehearsal dinner scene. Ginger ale stood in for champagne, and plastic seafood was mixed in with the real stuff around for the length of the shoot. She nearly ate a four-day-old mussel. Around her were scores of people, cranes, craft services, cameras, extras. All from words that sprang from her pen.

“I could not wrap my mind around it,” she says. “I was blown away.”

HILDERBRAND IS A VORACIOUS READER who avoids other people’s beach books. She gets sent all kinds of fiction and picks up only the novels she thinks are smart—some of them by established stars of literary fiction, others by new voices. “I’m really only going to read it if I really and truly believe your writing is exceptional,” she says. “Otherwise, it’s just not worth my time.”

Books, Beach, & Beyond, her new podcast with Tim Ehrenberg, marketing director for Nantucket’s two independent bookstores, features interviews with blockbuster authors like Ann Patchett, Colleen Hoover and Maggie O’Farrell.

In her new “retirement” phase, Hilderbrand plans to take longer than her usual eight months to write a novel. She’s thinking about a book she hopes will come out in the late 2020s. For now, she’s calling it The Novelists, about a group of author friends who meet at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Maybe she’ll even include a beach-book writer, saying it would give her “enormous joy” to mock herself. The book’s premise could change entirely, but either way it will explore writer relationships alongside professional jealousies, plagiarism accusations and divergent career paths. She envisions this book as higher-brow fiction, but she’s done trying to figure that out.

“In my head, it’s a literary novel, but I only write one way,” says Hilderbrand. She doesn’t see herself winning literary prizes even after her fresh start. “I don’t think fun books get chosen for these awards,” she says, adding that the people who pick the winners “just don’t want to have a good time, I guess.” She assumes literary gatekeepers don’t see her books as dark, gritty or complex enough, though she says she’s always aimed for that seriousness underneath the juicy exteriors of her stories.

“That’s what I’ve been doing my entire career,” she says. “I’m trying to bring my very literary background at Iowa, and trying to bring it to these beach books, so that when people do go to the beach, then it isn’t mindless. You know, it’s not mindless. And that’s why they’re so popular.”

On her text group of bestselling female author friends, a thread whose members include Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Curtis Sittenfeld and Sarah Dessen, Hilderbrand says the chat sometimes turns to the vaunted treatment of literary fiction over popular hits.

“When a man is held up in the publishing world as the greatest novelist of our era,” Hilderbrand says, “we’re all on the phone like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” She continued: “It’s just interesting the way writers are categorized and pigeonholed to some extent, and it’s really nice to have other people who are bestselling novelists who understand what it’s like.”

As she looks into the future, Hilderbrand won’t completely slam the door on the beach books that made her. She might backpedal a bit on the fine print of her retirement. It’s possible she could write another couple of Nantucket novels, she says, maybe even set in summer. But she won’t write those books unless two conditions are met: “After some time has passed,” she says. “And if I feel like it.”

Write to Ellen Gamerman at [email protected]

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Long Beach Brief, 08 de abril de 2024

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Uploaded by John Hauser on April 9, 2024

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

• United States
• Miami - Dade
• Miami Beach
• South Beach

Catch Miami Beach

Make a reservation, additional information.

• Dining style Elegant Dining
• Price $31 to $50
• Cuisines Unspecified, Seafood
• Hours of operation Daily 5:30 pm–11:00 pm
• Phone number (305) 985-0006
• Website https://www.catchrestaurants.com/location/catch-miami-beach/
• Dress code Formal Attire
• Executive chef Gianni Lamboy
• Location 200 South Pointe Dr, Miami Beach, FL 33139-7475
• Neighborhood South Beach
• Cross street Ocean Drive
• Parking details Valet
• Additional Beer, Cocktails, Full Bar, Gluten-free Options, Vegan, Wine

Ratings and Reviews

At present, Catch Miami Beach has no reviews. Please add a review after your dining experience to help others make a decision about where to eat.

Is Catch Miami Beach currently accepting reservations?

Yes, you can generally book this restaurant by choosing the date, time and party size on OpenTable.

200 South Pointe Dr, Miami Beach, FL 33139-7475

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