On The Beach

[CoteDAzur]

Has anyone read On The Beach?

I'm about 10 pages in and finding it a bit laughable.

Do I persevere?

So they are talking about a couple and this woman says "I hope they get married and have children". When told how unlikely that is with, you know, certain death in September, she replies:

"Oh dear, I keep forgetting."

Really???

Yes, but she's a woman. Who doesn't work. So, she must be barely able to put one word in front of the other, in Shuteworld.

Actually, it doesn't seem that unlikely that, in the event of everyone behaving as though nothing was happening, that you might forget quite often about the whole certain death thing.

:)

Maybe all the drinking and partying has made her forget?

I love 'watching' you read, Cote. You make me seem really easy to please and not-at-all-awkward in comparison. :)

I've just read 'Pied Piper' & 'Whatever happened to the Corbetts' (think I got the titles right) and what surprised/shocked me about both of them was the acceptance that the 'government' could be trusted, that authority was right and that we should calmly accept our fate

Yes overall calmly accept our fate was the theme; I'm rereading some other soon I think I wonder if they are the same

Dumbo here "forgets" she is going to die in a few months, plans to plant trees (rather than, say, prepare uber-thick clothes and migrate to the South Pole) and I'm the awkward one?

I'm about 45% in and basically skim-reading now. If they get into one more moronic conversation about whether trees are more beautiful in America or Australia, or whether they should plant this tree or that tree, I will start praying that some wild animals come and hurry them to their extinction. (Apologies to the book's fans).

Don't kid yourself, Remus, even I can't make you look easy to please

I think the point about the wife was that she was (a) a little woman as joan says, and (b) in deep denial as she couldn't face the death of her child.

It is a great premise for a book, but I have to say I found the extreme sexism hard to get past, and I read loads of this kind of thing. All the female characters were immensely dim and needed a slap around the head from a brooding male to wise them up.

At least Death of Grass - also v. dated - has its own built in gender critique.

That's exactly how I felt with that sodding 'Never Let Me Go' twaddle. They just couldn't die quickly enough for me.

Has anybody read Earth Abides? Both racist AND sexist, but also an interesting premise.

I agree with you on Never Let Me Go.

Dune was written in 1965, but is still relevant and definitely not condescending to women like this book.

I've read Earth Abides a couple of times and enjoy it for what it is basically. I do like dystopian and apocalyptic sci-fi and have always read "vintage" and classic stuff, so I can sort of get my brain into the right mode for the time it was written iyswim and go with the flow. Something set in the 50s say, won't put me off by displaying 50s attitudes towards women, I just treat it as scene setting, the same as I would with a very futuristic setting, and get on with it.
I like Earth Abides more than Alas, Babylon, and I positively hated Canticle for Leibowitz and Riddley Walker, and yet most people always seem to lump them in together and think if someone likes one of them, they'll like them all

Yes, I don't think you can lump them all in at all.

I love Riddley Walker, and found Earth Abides and On The Beach 'interesting' rather than books I would recommend.

Riddly Walker so, so disappointing. Such a 'triumph' of silliness over style. I was really underwhelmed by it.

One day, you will read Cloud Atlas (its dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories) and kick yourself for not having read it sooner. I will be there to tell you "I told you so"

Cloud Atlas was amazing, but you're putting me off On The Beach and I love a bit of dystopia.

On The Beach is not a dystopia. It is a utopia - an unrealistic, ideal, stylized end of the world scenario where everyone goes about their lives in a calm and content way, talk about how nice and decent their neighbors are and which trees they will plant for next year.

I see I'm confusing the apocalyptic and the dystopic. Still put off.

There is a very famous quote made by Ava Gardner when she came to Melbourne to make the movie. Somethng like "I cam here to make a film about the end of the world but this place is like the end of the world already".
Melburnians still take umbrage!

LOL. Maybe that's why everyone is just going about their daily lives in the shadow of impending doom

They are now petitioning to open fishing season on 10 Aug rather than 1 Sept, because they will be dead in Sept And some are against this idea as it can ruin fishing for years! Idiots

Hmm, it does make me think about climate change though. I'm watching documentaries about making the Airbus A330 slightly safer, while the Arctic sea ice is shrinking.

I have just dug my (ancient) copy out inspired by this thread. I remember reading it on a teenage holiday in the 80s at the time when I thought the world might end in a nuclear war (but knew how to shelter under a door eating tinned food until my guts turned inside out with radiation sickness

I read it last year for the first time and found it very dated, full of sexism and the 'stiff upper lip' attitude that people have already mentioned.

The couple with the baby did annoy me, especially at the end when the baby was in the cot and they didn't hold and cuddle it.

It is dated in it's social attitudes. I liked this book and found it moving. You have to be able to think in a fifties kind of morality way though. Some of his books are deeply strange to a modern sensibility - anyone read In The Wet?

However I think A Town Like Alice and Round The Bend are superb books.