The theme of Nevil Shute's [On the Beach] is dramatic and awe-inspiring: it is nothing less than the end of the world. Nor is his plot impossible, or even unlikely: the headlines of our daily papers proclaim it all too probable….

Despite its powerful theme, Nevil Shute's book is a very bad novel. The people in it are dull and unimaginative, and the ending is anti-climactic rather than apocalyptic. In fact, his characters are so flat and unappealing that you may well feel their final death from the inevitable radioactive sickness is no great loss.

In his earlier novels Mr. Shute showed himself skilful in handling melodrama and suspense, but here his limitations are so obvious as to be painful. It may be said that the effect is partly deliberate, as indicated by his quoting Eliot's famous lines about the world ending not in a bang but in...