Book Talk: Past favorites, part IV

During the 1950s, I read several novels by Nevil Shute, and I want to pay homage to this wonderful author. His full name was Nevil Shute Norway, but he dropped his surname from his novels so that possible adverse reaction to them would not reflect on his occupation as an aeronautical engineer. “Trustee from the Toolroom” was the first of his novels that I read, but here’s the one that has stuck in my memory through all the years.

Nevil Shute, On the Beach

In my youth I found Nevil Shute’s books to be straight-forward, devoid of “twist” endings, and populated by people who seemed to be real. On the Beach (1957, 250 pages in hardback), was written during the Cold War, a dispassionate account of the end of life on earth.

After a brief nuclear war, the dreaded effects of multiple atomic explosions — radiation — gradually wipes out life in the northern hemisphere and then drifts south.