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Features the author in converstation with his editor, Dan Franklin.
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming.
A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
When Beard's professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for him to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster.Ranging from the Arctic Circle to the deserts of New Mexico, Solar is a serious and darkly satirical novel, showing human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time. A story of one man's greed and self-deception, it is a profound and stylish new work from one of the world's great writers.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Exploring climate change through the lens of human nature,
By
This review is from: Solar (Paperback)
Solar tells the story of Michael Beard, an overweight and aging physicist who won the Nobel prize twenty years ago and hasn't had an interesting idea since. He plays on his fame and drifts between speaking engagements and sinecures, his private life is a disastrous series of failed marriages.That all changes when a freak accident leaves him in possession of a file full of brilliant ideas from a young post-grad, and claiming the work as his own, Beard sets out to build a new technology that will single-handedly solve the world's energy crisis and stop climate change. I won't spoil it for you by saying any more about the story - not that there is much of a story. Like the protagonist, Solar sort of bumbles along, following Beard to the Arctic and back, to conferences, lectures, bored nights in motel rooms, until it suddenly picks up at the end as Beard's various mistakes all suddenly begin to catch up with him all at once. Michael Beard is such a thoroughly unlikeable character that I nearly gave up halfway through, but there are enough flashes of humour or interesting observations about human nature to make it worth persevering. It's not a great book - the reviewers panning it here have a point. Much of the book is mundane, well written but rather empty and moping. Nothing of any real interest happens until a good third of the way in, and the ending is somewhat contrived. Nevertheless, it's a satire and McEwan is attempting something rather bold - exploring climate change through the lens of human nature. Read that way, I think McEwan pulls it off, although I do wonder what his established fans will make of it.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good reason for mixed reviews!,
By
This review is from: Solar (Paperback)
Just glancing at the star ratings for this book and I can see why the reception is so mixed. It's no spoiler to say the book ends on a huge cliff hanger and that is massively frustrating for the reader. However I can't agree with people saying that the fundamental problem lies in the dislike-ability of the protagonist. Yes he's an ass, in the style of a Martin Amis character, but this does not make the novel any less readable. A very weird read but certainly one worth persevering with; I personally did not get bored half way through. I rarely have time to finish a book these days but I finished this.I should add that for those of you who are fans of Atonement, do not expect the same treatment here. This is a very modern novel in the vein of David Lodge or Martin Amis as opposed to the slightly sepia-toned atmosphere of McEwan's other works.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"...manic moments, brief neural bursts, compacted but cloudy episodes...,
By
This review is from: Solar (Hardcover)
Not all that original in terms of plot (older man steals younger man's ideas and capitalises on his death) and with one of the least prepossessing protagonists ever invented, this is not going to turn into one of my favourite McEwan books, even in retrospect. It's strange but I find that almost all of his books become better in the memory than they are in the moment of reading. Is this why, I ask myself, I have read his book The Child In Time three times and The Cement Garden twice? Or that I've re-read the first part of Atonement at least twice? I don't think I'll read Solar again.However, this is Ian McEwan trying for a Zadie Smith-like rollicking social comedy and tripping up before he's halfway up his own orifice. It starts off well. There is some wryness in his thoughts on the boot room as a metaphor for man's so far disastrous reaction to climate change, or in recounting a discomforting tale to end a conference speech, only to find it is GT (Good Thief) and twice as old as time to the rest of the world. But Michael Beard is a TW and how he manages to attract five wives and wind up as he does, with two women ready to scrap over him is frankly just incredible. This is a short tub of lard with commitment-phobia, yet women are crazy for him. The `murder' that isn't, is probably his cleverest moment, and that's counting the physics. Not funny, but still some faultless writing. Not every book has to be about beautiful people, but this one sells it's real subject (global warming) short and leaves one shaking one's head. Isn't the mid-life male crisis novel dead yet?
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