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Solar
O ano é 2000. A maré de más notícias sobre o clima e o aquecimento global inunda o noticiário. Michael Beard, cientista consagrado e prêmio Nobel de física, não parece nada preocupado. Seus interesses atuais se limitam a fantasias eróticas - concretizadas ou não -, bebida e mesa farta, de preferência repleta de guloseimas pouco recomendáveis para um homem de sua idade. Autoindulgente e cínico, Beard não se comove mais com as homenagens que lhe são periodicamente oferecidas, apesar de apreciar as quantias que costumam acompanhá-las. O governo britânico, preocupado com as repercussões eleitorais do aquecimento global, resolve criar o Centro Nacional de Energia Renovável, e Beard é convenientemente convidado para sua presidência. Em 2005, após um acidente ocasionar uma reviravolta em sua vida, Beard começa a colher os resultados de uma revolucionária pesquisa sobre o uso da luz solar para a obtenção de energia limpa e barata a partir da água. Segredos do passado, no entanto, insistem em ameaçar a prosperidade conquistada, tornando imperioso mantê-los submersos a qualquer custo.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
932 people are currently reading
12413 people want to read
About the author
Ian McEwan
141 books18.7k followersIan McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
McEwan lives in London.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
McEwan lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,201 reviews
June 25, 2012
The novel is completed. He has posted the bulky typescript to his publisher - old-fashioned, he prefers this unnecessary gesture to the casual economy of e-mailing a PDF - and now he is free of the tormented inner voice telling him to reword, rejig, rewrite, rethink.
He knows it is not as good as his earlier books, which sometimes feel as though they were written by a near stranger, by a person he only half-remembers being. He has poured some of his confusion and disappointment into the novel's central character, along with other self-loathings: his treacherous body, his increasingly unreliable memory, the stream of women who - God knows why - want to sleep with an aging, still famous novelist, and to whose insistent demands he occasionally acquiesces. Against his better judgement, he has taken a side-swipe at his own activities in trying to slow the inevitability of climate change, cruelly satirizing the concerned group of like-minded writers who sometimes appear with him on late-night TV programs that few people watch. He wonders if anybody will recognize himself, but considers it improbable; he has moved around the cards thoroughly enough that no one will spot the lady.
He tries not to think about the book's many shortcomings. The passages which laziness and failing imagination have made him haphazardly borrow from his own and other people's writing: an episode from Enduring Love, with the focus slightly changed and Milton replacing Keats; the polar bear theme from that Norwegian novel he read a few years ago; a whole scene from Douglas Adams. Even his timid editor reacted to that last one, and with bad grace he has inserted an explanatory passage that puts him in the clear. Oddly, the thing he feels most distressed about is the letter from his physicist friend, who has faithfully read every line and located a few errors. "Rest mass, rather than resting mass? And surely you mean Ricci tensor rather than Ricci scalar?" Ten minutes on Google show he's right, but it's too much trouble to call the publisher at this stage.
The worst part, he thinks as he pours himself another glass of Macallan, is that it's good enough. He has accumulated an army of loyal fans, and they won't desert him at this late hour. There is plenty of his trademark prose, even if he sometimes lapses into telling rather than showing for pages at a time. The opening is strong and will suck people in. He has cleverly rearranged the timeline to create the necessary dramatic tension, as the plot moves towards a climax as mechanical as that in the only explicit sex scene. It will attract a few positive reviews; who knows, some of them may even be sincere. Above all, he knows it's a page-turner.
But he still feels disgusted with his technical competence, and he has marked that in one of the more bitterly self-referential passages. He re-reads it, and feels an obscure satisfaction. Maybe a few other readers will also be amused for a moment.
He knows it is not as good as his earlier books, which sometimes feel as though they were written by a near stranger, by a person he only half-remembers being. He has poured some of his confusion and disappointment into the novel's central character, along with other self-loathings: his treacherous body, his increasingly unreliable memory, the stream of women who - God knows why - want to sleep with an aging, still famous novelist, and to whose insistent demands he occasionally acquiesces. Against his better judgement, he has taken a side-swipe at his own activities in trying to slow the inevitability of climate change, cruelly satirizing the concerned group of like-minded writers who sometimes appear with him on late-night TV programs that few people watch. He wonders if anybody will recognize himself, but considers it improbable; he has moved around the cards thoroughly enough that no one will spot the lady.
He tries not to think about the book's many shortcomings. The passages which laziness and failing imagination have made him haphazardly borrow from his own and other people's writing: an episode from Enduring Love, with the focus slightly changed and Milton replacing Keats; the polar bear theme from that Norwegian novel he read a few years ago; a whole scene from Douglas Adams. Even his timid editor reacted to that last one, and with bad grace he has inserted an explanatory passage that puts him in the clear. Oddly, the thing he feels most distressed about is the letter from his physicist friend, who has faithfully read every line and located a few errors. "Rest mass, rather than resting mass? And surely you mean Ricci tensor rather than Ricci scalar?" Ten minutes on Google show he's right, but it's too much trouble to call the publisher at this stage.
The worst part, he thinks as he pours himself another glass of Macallan, is that it's good enough. He has accumulated an army of loyal fans, and they won't desert him at this late hour. There is plenty of his trademark prose, even if he sometimes lapses into telling rather than showing for pages at a time. The opening is strong and will suck people in. He has cleverly rearranged the timeline to create the necessary dramatic tension, as the plot moves towards a climax as mechanical as that in the only explicit sex scene. It will attract a few positive reviews; who knows, some of them may even be sincere. Above all, he knows it's a page-turner.
But he still feels disgusted with his technical competence, and he has marked that in one of the more bitterly self-referential passages. He re-reads it, and feels an obscure satisfaction. Maybe a few other readers will also be amused for a moment.
He took the bag in both hands and pulled its neck apart, discharging a clammy fragrance of frying fat and vinegar. It was an artful laboratory simulation of the corner fish and chip shop, an enactment of fond memories and desire and nationhood. That flag was a considered choice. He lifted clear a single crisp between forefinger and thumb, replaced the bag on the table, and sat back. He was a man to take his pleasures seriously. The trick was to set the fragment on the centre of the tongue and, after a moment's spreading sensation, push the potato up hard to shatter against the roof of the mouth. His theory was that the rigid irregular surface caused tiny abrasions in the soft flesh into which salt and chemicals poured, creating a mild and distinct pleasure-pain...He pours a third glass.
The salty residue from the first round gave him the impression that he was bleeding from the gums. He slumped back in his seat, opened his mouth and repeated the experiment, although this time he kept his eyes open. Inevitably, the second crisp was less piquant, less surprising, less penetrating than the first, and it was this shortfall, this sensual disappointment, that prompted the need, familar to drug addicts, to increase the dose.
March 25, 2021
ian mcewan hates you. have no illusions.
the guy flings more shit and pukes more bile in solar than g.g. allin ever dared dream.
check it: mcewan dazzles in select passages, but the sum ain't always more than its parts -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. those perfect books with clearly defined themes, succinct, streamlined… yuk. you can have 'em. we like the meandering messes, shot to shit with all the baggage. but at the end of the slop… we've gotta feel something, it's gotta mean something. so mcewan throws a lot at us… but it ain't enough: picasso could impress with something he sketched while taking a shit. and mcewan, the best of his countrymen (yup. gimme mcewan over rushdie, amis, or barnes, anyday) offers up some great characterizations, nice acerbic little observations on man in the world he's created for himself, some great prose, etc… but solar, above all else, reeks of one thing: fatigue. yes. mcewan's writing about the same old bastard, displaying the same old bad behavior, all tangled up in the same old rigid story -- it doesn't work dramatically or satirically. and what're we left with? bullshit. a roth/mailer/updike caricature with not much to say for itself.
i challenge a reader to tell me what lies here other than a gratuitously pessimistic view of humanity lacking a morsel of insight or true emotion. mcewan's running on empty. he's tired. bitter. angry. it's ugly.
(sorry michelle!)
the guy flings more shit and pukes more bile in solar than g.g. allin ever dared dream.
check it: mcewan dazzles in select passages, but the sum ain't always more than its parts -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. those perfect books with clearly defined themes, succinct, streamlined… yuk. you can have 'em. we like the meandering messes, shot to shit with all the baggage. but at the end of the slop… we've gotta feel something, it's gotta mean something. so mcewan throws a lot at us… but it ain't enough: picasso could impress with something he sketched while taking a shit. and mcewan, the best of his countrymen (yup. gimme mcewan over rushdie, amis, or barnes, anyday) offers up some great characterizations, nice acerbic little observations on man in the world he's created for himself, some great prose, etc… but solar, above all else, reeks of one thing: fatigue. yes. mcewan's writing about the same old bastard, displaying the same old bad behavior, all tangled up in the same old rigid story -- it doesn't work dramatically or satirically. and what're we left with? bullshit. a roth/mailer/updike caricature with not much to say for itself.
i challenge a reader to tell me what lies here other than a gratuitously pessimistic view of humanity lacking a morsel of insight or true emotion. mcewan's running on empty. he's tired. bitter. angry. it's ugly.
(sorry michelle!)
September 12, 2019
Una cosa que me gusta de este hombre es su variedad de registros. He leído ya cuatro de sus libros, todos muy distintos. Quizás este se encuentre cerquita de Sábado, por el estilo, pero mezclado con algo así como la conjura de los necios. Me he reído y me ha indignado (que son dos de los objetivos del libro) a partes iguales. Algunas de las escenas cómicas me han parecido realmente memorables.
Pero tengo que reprocharle tres cosas :
a) El final del libro. Creo que un final más canalla hubiera quedado mucho mejor.
b) La parte científica. No creo que fuera necesaria tanta palabra. Por otra parte, aunque mis conocimientos no me permiten saber si se ha documentado bien, que algo se pueda reducir un 300%, como se dice en alguna parte del libro, es algo, que me pone algo nervioso.
c) Lo último y esto no se lo perdono: que califique de sosas las canciones de los Beatles (a puntito he estado de quitarle una estrella).
March 28, 2024
Should I feel ashamed? According to some critics of McEwan’s Solar I should, since its hero, Michael Beard, is a despicable character, a philanderer, a plagiarist, an egocentric and a criminal liar… whom I totally liked. Moreover, it is a long time since I have been so immersed in a reading to forget everything around me – last week I almost missed the subway stop on my way to university, so much I was enjoying this crazy, crazy book, which rose such conflicting reactions among its readers.
One of the most acerbic reviews was written immediately after its apparition in 2010 by Jason Cowley in ”The Guardian” (here it is). The journalist mercilessly pointed out many of what he considered the minuses of the novel, from the one-dimensional character to the trodden subject, from the sometimes nonsensical comedy to the lack of other perspectives, ending with a graphic image of the book as an empty room in which only the groan-like confession “of a fat, selfish man in late middle age eating himself” can be heard.
However seductive this metaphor of a novel speaking like an echoic chamber is, I beg to differ. Not against the observations per se, they are true enough, but against the implication they are flaws.
In my opinion, Solar is a brilliantly one-man’s show. Is this one-man, Michael Beard, also one-dimensional? Absolutely, since he is the only voice of the narrative (mocking objectivity with its third person) – I should hope this is the interpretation the critic gave to the term, because even though the hero doesn’t change – and proudly so – he is by no means a flat, superficially built character. Although he has some caricatural traits, they are not inconsistent with his type (and I agree with Jason Cowley regarding the neo-realistic style of the author) and reminded me vividly of David Lodge’s academic figures. Furthermore, he is so forgiving of his own behaviour, so candid in the admiration of his own consistency in vice and weakness he doesn’t try to hide at all, and so determined to resist any woman who would try and change him that he is really touching:
Michael Beard is indeed a zany fighter for his right to be questionable, to take off his mask of decency and scientific morgue, that is, to come down the pedestal of a Nobel laureate and happily mix with (very) lesser beings. Life is a nightmare, but a funny one, so why not try it all? I think the comedy is genially built precisely on this humorous interpretation of the philosophy of solipsism, that is, on the hero’s belief that his space is inhabited only by him and the others are there to please, importunate or serve him, but they do not have a life independently of him. Like any minor god, he becomes nasty only when the others try to assert their own existence.
This is so human a reaction that even when his conduct is blatantly immoral, the reader empathizes with him and judges his behaviour rather leniently. This bald, fat man had it all and, despite his great talent, scattered it all. And here it might be discovered, in my opinion, the real theme of this superb book: not to depict Beard as a symbol of the consumerism and waste that haunt our times (as Cowley observed) – this is a secondary, even though very clever theme – but to answer an old question: does the spark of genius excuse a questionable behaviour? Theoretically, and in true political correctness, it doesn’t excuse it at all, but what a consolation for everyday people! His misadventures and misconduct are so easily to be identified with, that it also seems (to our secret delight) that his genius is also easy to be identified with. For here you have a Nobel laureate with a noble mission: to save the world by making the planet green. The same man who made an accident look as a murder in order to frame the lover of his wife, the same man who based his research in artificial photosynthesis on the work of his late student, without mentioning him at all, the same man who sincerely suffered for his wife’s infidelity while he had eleven affairs in the five years of marriage, and so on, and so forth. And, like I said, what makes him even more approachable is that he doesn’t oppose his character at all, he is indulgent with himself and invites the others to do the same:
Towards the end of his story and possibly his life he has the same epiphany as most of us: the humans cannot really change, not even a Nobel prize, not even a great cause, not even a child can fundamentally transform a criminal into a law-abiding citizen, a cheat into a faithful husband, in a word, a lesser person into a better one. And this comical resignation to a dishonourable fate is the best excuse for us too, for all our past and future failures – so how can we not sympathise with him, how can we not feel, like him, cheated?
The extraordinary talent of Ian McEwan regaled us with another book in which apparently incompatible ingredients blended perfectly: extensive scientific vocabulary and research jargon which could arise an inferiority complex in the profane reader but read surprisingly well; an excellent comedy of situations and characters which would deserve an extensive study of its own; an anti hero so happy with his “anti” condition that he becomes, against all expectations, an almost reliable narrator; and last but not least, an unexpected open ending, by cruelly cutting the narrative at its rising point, at the very moment when all ghosts of the past gather to beset our hero. How and whether he gets rid of this can only be guessed, although it is devilishly suggested by the narrative voice that the swelling he feels in his heart for his daughter and which he takes for love could be in fact the onset of a heart attack which would solve all his problems once and for all.
Tabor Fischer, complaining about “the brakes… applied rather forcefully” supposes wishfully that they are due to a sequel. I should hope not. Such a book could only have such an ending.
One of the most acerbic reviews was written immediately after its apparition in 2010 by Jason Cowley in ”The Guardian” (here it is). The journalist mercilessly pointed out many of what he considered the minuses of the novel, from the one-dimensional character to the trodden subject, from the sometimes nonsensical comedy to the lack of other perspectives, ending with a graphic image of the book as an empty room in which only the groan-like confession “of a fat, selfish man in late middle age eating himself” can be heard.
However seductive this metaphor of a novel speaking like an echoic chamber is, I beg to differ. Not against the observations per se, they are true enough, but against the implication they are flaws.
In my opinion, Solar is a brilliantly one-man’s show. Is this one-man, Michael Beard, also one-dimensional? Absolutely, since he is the only voice of the narrative (mocking objectivity with its third person) – I should hope this is the interpretation the critic gave to the term, because even though the hero doesn’t change – and proudly so – he is by no means a flat, superficially built character. Although he has some caricatural traits, they are not inconsistent with his type (and I agree with Jason Cowley regarding the neo-realistic style of the author) and reminded me vividly of David Lodge’s academic figures. Furthermore, he is so forgiving of his own behaviour, so candid in the admiration of his own consistency in vice and weakness he doesn’t try to hide at all, and so determined to resist any woman who would try and change him that he is really touching:
Beard comfortably shared all of humanity’s faults, and here he was, a monster of insincerity, cradling tenderly on his arm a woman he thought he might leave one day soon, listening to her with sensitive expression in the expectation that soon he would have to do some talking himself, when all he wanted was to make love to her without preliminaries, eat the meal she had cooked, drink a bottle of wine, and then sleep – without blame, without guilt.
Michael Beard is indeed a zany fighter for his right to be questionable, to take off his mask of decency and scientific morgue, that is, to come down the pedestal of a Nobel laureate and happily mix with (very) lesser beings. Life is a nightmare, but a funny one, so why not try it all? I think the comedy is genially built precisely on this humorous interpretation of the philosophy of solipsism, that is, on the hero’s belief that his space is inhabited only by him and the others are there to please, importunate or serve him, but they do not have a life independently of him. Like any minor god, he becomes nasty only when the others try to assert their own existence.
This is so human a reaction that even when his conduct is blatantly immoral, the reader empathizes with him and judges his behaviour rather leniently. This bald, fat man had it all and, despite his great talent, scattered it all. And here it might be discovered, in my opinion, the real theme of this superb book: not to depict Beard as a symbol of the consumerism and waste that haunt our times (as Cowley observed) – this is a secondary, even though very clever theme – but to answer an old question: does the spark of genius excuse a questionable behaviour? Theoretically, and in true political correctness, it doesn’t excuse it at all, but what a consolation for everyday people! His misadventures and misconduct are so easily to be identified with, that it also seems (to our secret delight) that his genius is also easy to be identified with. For here you have a Nobel laureate with a noble mission: to save the world by making the planet green. The same man who made an accident look as a murder in order to frame the lover of his wife, the same man who based his research in artificial photosynthesis on the work of his late student, without mentioning him at all, the same man who sincerely suffered for his wife’s infidelity while he had eleven affairs in the five years of marriage, and so on, and so forth. And, like I said, what makes him even more approachable is that he doesn’t oppose his character at all, he is indulgent with himself and invites the others to do the same:
He was self-sufficient, self-absorbed, his mind a cluster of appetites and dreamy thoughts. Like many clever men who prize objectivity, he was a solipsist at heart, and his heart was a nugget of ice…
Towards the end of his story and possibly his life he has the same epiphany as most of us: the humans cannot really change, not even a Nobel prize, not even a great cause, not even a child can fundamentally transform a criminal into a law-abiding citizen, a cheat into a faithful husband, in a word, a lesser person into a better one. And this comical resignation to a dishonourable fate is the best excuse for us too, for all our past and future failures – so how can we not sympathise with him, how can we not feel, like him, cheated?
The surprise was this: his existence since Catriona’s birth was much as before. His friends had told him he would be astonished, he would be transformed, his values would change. But nothing was transformed. Catriona was fine, but he was the same old mess. And now that he had entered upon the final active stages of his life, he was beginning to understand that, barring accidents, life did not change. He had been deluded.
The extraordinary talent of Ian McEwan regaled us with another book in which apparently incompatible ingredients blended perfectly: extensive scientific vocabulary and research jargon which could arise an inferiority complex in the profane reader but read surprisingly well; an excellent comedy of situations and characters which would deserve an extensive study of its own; an anti hero so happy with his “anti” condition that he becomes, against all expectations, an almost reliable narrator; and last but not least, an unexpected open ending, by cruelly cutting the narrative at its rising point, at the very moment when all ghosts of the past gather to beset our hero. How and whether he gets rid of this can only be guessed, although it is devilishly suggested by the narrative voice that the swelling he feels in his heart for his daughter and which he takes for love could be in fact the onset of a heart attack which would solve all his problems once and for all.
Tabor Fischer, complaining about “the brakes… applied rather forcefully” supposes wishfully that they are due to a sequel. I should hope not. Such a book could only have such an ending.
November 21, 2025
Michael Beard is an anti-hero. We discover it when he reaches his fifties.
At first glance, he is a loser; he negotiates in a job that does not fulfill him. His fifth (!) wife is cheating on him. At the same time, we understand Michael Beard is a patent infidel in bad faith. When he feels his wife is slipping away, he pathetically tries to win her back. Yet he is an intelligent, brilliant man. As proof, he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics some twenty years earlier. What happened in the meantime? This man is the archetype of human indecision; he puts everything off until tomorrow and lets himself live.
This book is in three parts: the first part is delightful. I have several times burst out laughing at the tribulations of this man who decides to escape with his life to live for a few days in Antarctica. The purpose of the expedition is to examine the impact of global warming on sea ice melting. I will never look at a lip balm tube the same way again.
As the book progresses, the tone becomes more biting and grating. The subject is the inertia of men (and not only Michael Beard's) in the face of this famous global warming: Michael seems interested in the fight against climate degradation, but his goal is exclusively personal. Egocentric and misogynistic (or misanthropic) alone matter to him in his life after the deluge.
At first glance, he is a loser; he negotiates in a job that does not fulfill him. His fifth (!) wife is cheating on him. At the same time, we understand Michael Beard is a patent infidel in bad faith. When he feels his wife is slipping away, he pathetically tries to win her back. Yet he is an intelligent, brilliant man. As proof, he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics some twenty years earlier. What happened in the meantime? This man is the archetype of human indecision; he puts everything off until tomorrow and lets himself live.
This book is in three parts: the first part is delightful. I have several times burst out laughing at the tribulations of this man who decides to escape with his life to live for a few days in Antarctica. The purpose of the expedition is to examine the impact of global warming on sea ice melting. I will never look at a lip balm tube the same way again.
As the book progresses, the tone becomes more biting and grating. The subject is the inertia of men (and not only Michael Beard's) in the face of this famous global warming: Michael seems interested in the fight against climate degradation, but his goal is exclusively personal. Egocentric and misogynistic (or misanthropic) alone matter to him in his life after the deluge.
July 16, 2014
The main character in Solar can’t control his appetites. He eats like Jabba the Hut at a casino buffet, drinks like an alcoholic fish and chases women every chance he gets. He’s also an unorganized slob who would rather just travel or stay somewhere else rather than clean up his own living space. On top of being greedy, opportunistic, selfish and lazy, he has no regard for the future. He can rationalize any potential warning signs of health issues or unpleasant business he’d rather not deal with and just keep living exactly the way he always has.
Sound like any species you know?
Michael Beard is an English physicist who once won a Nobel Prize and has been coasting off that accomplishment ever since. Rather than do any more work in physics, he’s content to give lectures and take a series of figurehead jobs. He’s also been married five times and has never been faithful to any of them, but wife #5, Patrice, has turned the tables by having an open affair with a workman doing repairs on their house.
Naturally, the self-absorbed Beard wants what he can’t have and becomes obsessed with winning Patrice’s love again. He’s also taken a job as the titular head of an English think tank working on alternative energy sources and stopping global warming. Beard believes in the science of climate change, but he figures it’ll be somebody else’s problem after he’s dead so he’s really only interested in the paycheck. A zealous young researcher is driving him nuts by wanting to work on solar energy instead of the worthless wind turbine Beard has committed the institute to building.
A freak accident puts Beard in a position to claim credit for groundbreaking research and just maybe invent a whole new energy industry and save the world. If he can put aside his greed and need for instant gratification long enough to make it work.
Clever, Mr. McEwan. Very clever. Using a brilliant but lazy man who knows full well that he’s courting disaster with his lifestyle and his actions, but is just too weak willed to do anything about it as both a potential savior and symbolic destroyer of the world was a nice piece of work.
Sound like any species you know?
Michael Beard is an English physicist who once won a Nobel Prize and has been coasting off that accomplishment ever since. Rather than do any more work in physics, he’s content to give lectures and take a series of figurehead jobs. He’s also been married five times and has never been faithful to any of them, but wife #5, Patrice, has turned the tables by having an open affair with a workman doing repairs on their house.
Naturally, the self-absorbed Beard wants what he can’t have and becomes obsessed with winning Patrice’s love again. He’s also taken a job as the titular head of an English think tank working on alternative energy sources and stopping global warming. Beard believes in the science of climate change, but he figures it’ll be somebody else’s problem after he’s dead so he’s really only interested in the paycheck. A zealous young researcher is driving him nuts by wanting to work on solar energy instead of the worthless wind turbine Beard has committed the institute to building.
A freak accident puts Beard in a position to claim credit for groundbreaking research and just maybe invent a whole new energy industry and save the world. If he can put aside his greed and need for instant gratification long enough to make it work.
Clever, Mr. McEwan. Very clever. Using a brilliant but lazy man who knows full well that he’s courting disaster with his lifestyle and his actions, but is just too weak willed to do anything about it as both a potential savior and symbolic destroyer of the world was a nice piece of work.
June 6, 2011
I was reading in bed last night--I was a little more than half-way through--and it hit me: it is taking way too long to read this thing. Why? Not because it's a big book, or particularly difficult to understand, but because it is so boring. I dread opening it each day so I put it off. I read anything else. I closed it and tossed it aside. I'm done. I'll go find a new one tomorrow at the library.
It's really disappointing too, because when I read the premise, it sounded great! But McEwan spends so much time on these little details that he forces unnaturally into metaphors that you find you are stuck reading about how the human race is like a healthy spore a few different times a few different ways. (That particular analogy, by the way, was pretty good, until he pointed it out and forced me to see it rather than letting me come to the relationship on my own.) The main character is well developed, but that doesn't make him any less boring. He's an old man who sucks at relationships, and that's another thing we spend every few pages being told. Does he do nothing other than think about his past marriages and how to screw up future ones?
Anyway, yes, I found this book to be a massive disappointment and must add it as my second book I couldn't finish. How depressing is that?
It's really disappointing too, because when I read the premise, it sounded great! But McEwan spends so much time on these little details that he forces unnaturally into metaphors that you find you are stuck reading about how the human race is like a healthy spore a few different times a few different ways. (That particular analogy, by the way, was pretty good, until he pointed it out and forced me to see it rather than letting me come to the relationship on my own.) The main character is well developed, but that doesn't make him any less boring. He's an old man who sucks at relationships, and that's another thing we spend every few pages being told. Does he do nothing other than think about his past marriages and how to screw up future ones?
Anyway, yes, I found this book to be a massive disappointment and must add it as my second book I couldn't finish. How depressing is that?
September 1, 2010
So I imagine young novelists are a promiscuous bunch. Writers play around and flirt with all manner of novels: date one genre for a few months before finding it oppressive.... move in too quickly with a voice that turns out to be all wrong for them.... have one-night stands with forms that are way too experimental. And I'm sure it's great fun for awhile, but it's not what they're ultimately after. No novelist wants to play the field forever! And some do find that special novel early, while for others it takes a lot longer time. Some never do find it, and remain lifelong bachelors, which eventually does become a bit tragic, a guy in his forties chatting up ironic twists on noir that are way too young for him... but I'm not talking about them, the ones still out tom-catting around. I'm thinking about novelists who did find the One.
It's the match they've been searching for, they settle down and buy a house. The novelist and his novel are a symbiotic unit. They socialize with other couples in the cul-de-sac, their kids all play together. The novelists belong to the same club, and their novels are close. When the novelists take the train in together, they ask after each other's novel, with whom they're familiar old friends.
And maybe it goes a little beyond that. As happy as each novelist is with his novel, after some time he can't help noticing how well the other novelist's novel has kept itself up. (Maybe it's all those pilates classes? There's something about the other novelist's novel's thick red hair and super-meta twist endings....) As the years go by the other novelist's novel starts looking.... well, sorry, but novel. Because while there's nothing like coming home to one's own novel each night, the truth must be told that there is nothing quite like coming home to one's own novel each night.... and it could also be the truth that these novelists and their respective novels are in a bit of a rut, and haven't slept together in months. You know how it is.
All this endless babble (anyone still there?) is to say, that I finally figured out what went wrong with fiction this summer: Ian McEwan and Martin Amis went to a key party. They swapped novels, and the results -- while perhaps an invigorating experience for each middle-aged novelist himself -- were far from successful in this reader's eyes.
Full disclosure: I'm only halfway through Solar right now, and am on the fence about whether I should keep reading. (Any opinions on that?) I did manage to finish The Pregnant Widow, Martin Amis's take on the McEwanesque themes of a bygone era and erotic longings, but I'm finding this one even less fun. See, youthful sex in an 1960s Italian castle would've been great if McEwan were writing it. But Amis isn't lyrical. Worse, though: McEwan isn't funny.
Michael Beard, the Nobel-prize winning physicist of Solar, is a classic Amis antihero, but with a lot of melted ice. That is, John Self of Money and Richard Tull of The Information are revolting losers who are driven into the ground by their appetites and too horrifically flawed to be real. But McEwan can't pull off the biting, stinging nausea that's Amis's so-bad-it's-good trademark. He isn't funny -- not to me, anyway -- and he just can't go gonzo. This book has slapstick moments, what I suppose was meant to be satire, and plenty of scenes that should have been ludicrous. But the volume's never up high enough, and it's all tempered by that patented lovely-sentenced restraint. The rather bloodless result is something that is not great the way I expect McEwan to be great (to be fair, I've only read a couple of his books), and certainly doesn't meet the searing demands of the topic he's chosen. Martin Amis should be writing about climate change! His take on human greed, sloth, and blind grabbing depravity is uniquely suited to this topic. McEwan's is not. McEwan should be writing stuff like the scene in this book that describes landing at Heathrow, but he shouldn't be writing a Martin Amis novel (he also shouldn't be writing a Richard Powers novel, but that's another rant).
And this really isn't the place to expand on this, but to be fair, the hollow, ineffective, and almost comically amateurish ending of The Pregnant Widow might be something McEwan would've handled brilliantly. Your friend Ian's rendition of "Once in a Lifetime" is inimitable, Martin! So sit down and watch, and don't try it yourself.
Enough of an experiment, you married that novel for a reason. Now go home to her, boys, and tell her you love her.
It's the match they've been searching for, they settle down and buy a house. The novelist and his novel are a symbiotic unit. They socialize with other couples in the cul-de-sac, their kids all play together. The novelists belong to the same club, and their novels are close. When the novelists take the train in together, they ask after each other's novel, with whom they're familiar old friends.
And maybe it goes a little beyond that. As happy as each novelist is with his novel, after some time he can't help noticing how well the other novelist's novel has kept itself up. (Maybe it's all those pilates classes? There's something about the other novelist's novel's thick red hair and super-meta twist endings....) As the years go by the other novelist's novel starts looking.... well, sorry, but novel. Because while there's nothing like coming home to one's own novel each night, the truth must be told that there is nothing quite like coming home to one's own novel each night.... and it could also be the truth that these novelists and their respective novels are in a bit of a rut, and haven't slept together in months. You know how it is.
All this endless babble (anyone still there?) is to say, that I finally figured out what went wrong with fiction this summer: Ian McEwan and Martin Amis went to a key party. They swapped novels, and the results -- while perhaps an invigorating experience for each middle-aged novelist himself -- were far from successful in this reader's eyes.
Full disclosure: I'm only halfway through Solar right now, and am on the fence about whether I should keep reading. (Any opinions on that?) I did manage to finish The Pregnant Widow, Martin Amis's take on the McEwanesque themes of a bygone era and erotic longings, but I'm finding this one even less fun. See, youthful sex in an 1960s Italian castle would've been great if McEwan were writing it. But Amis isn't lyrical. Worse, though: McEwan isn't funny.
Michael Beard, the Nobel-prize winning physicist of Solar, is a classic Amis antihero, but with a lot of melted ice. That is, John Self of Money and Richard Tull of The Information are revolting losers who are driven into the ground by their appetites and too horrifically flawed to be real. But McEwan can't pull off the biting, stinging nausea that's Amis's so-bad-it's-good trademark. He isn't funny -- not to me, anyway -- and he just can't go gonzo. This book has slapstick moments, what I suppose was meant to be satire, and plenty of scenes that should have been ludicrous. But the volume's never up high enough, and it's all tempered by that patented lovely-sentenced restraint. The rather bloodless result is something that is not great the way I expect McEwan to be great (to be fair, I've only read a couple of his books), and certainly doesn't meet the searing demands of the topic he's chosen. Martin Amis should be writing about climate change! His take on human greed, sloth, and blind grabbing depravity is uniquely suited to this topic. McEwan's is not. McEwan should be writing stuff like the scene in this book that describes landing at Heathrow, but he shouldn't be writing a Martin Amis novel (he also shouldn't be writing a Richard Powers novel, but that's another rant).
And this really isn't the place to expand on this, but to be fair, the hollow, ineffective, and almost comically amateurish ending of The Pregnant Widow might be something McEwan would've handled brilliantly. Your friend Ian's rendition of "Once in a Lifetime" is inimitable, Martin! So sit down and watch, and don't try it yourself.
Enough of an experiment, you married that novel for a reason. Now go home to her, boys, and tell her you love her.
September 30, 2018
Rating: two grudging stars of five (p81)
In the middle of a paragraph, a thunderbolt struck me: I don't like Ian McEwan. I didn't like Atonement...I thought the damned kid shoulda been stoned...I didn't like Saturday...and I do NOT like this tedious tale of a credit-grabbing bore of a has-been.
So that's that. Like David Lodge, I shall leave the McEwanizing to the Brits and their fellow travelers. I myownself will be hornswoggled if I EVER consent to open another of his books.
In the middle of a paragraph, a thunderbolt struck me: I don't like Ian McEwan. I didn't like Atonement...I thought the damned kid shoulda been stoned...I didn't like Saturday...and I do NOT like this tedious tale of a credit-grabbing bore of a has-been.
So that's that. Like David Lodge, I shall leave the McEwanizing to the Brits and their fellow travelers. I myownself will be hornswoggled if I EVER consent to open another of his books.
September 10, 2019
'Solar' no se parece a ninguno de los libros que he leído anteriormente de Ian McEwan. En él te encuentras grandes dosis de humor, inglés, por supuesto, llenas de ironía y sátira, muy del estilo del gran David Lodge. En mi recuerdo quedará el viaje que realiza el protagonista al Ártico, parte en la que es inevitable soltar alguna que otra carcajada.
La historia está protagonizada por Michael Beard, de unos cincuenta años, físico teórico y ganador del Premio Nobel hace unos años por su contribución al mundo científico con su Combinación Beard-Einstein. Beard está ya en su quinto matrimonio, y éste tampoco es que vaya por buen camino. No tiene hijos y realmente nunca ha estado enamorado de ninguna de sus mujeres. El matrimonio no significa mucho para él, y en sus constantes viajes para dar conferencias y recibir homenajes, no se corta a la hora de hacer amantes. Pero este éxito con las mujeres no es debido precisamente a su físico (Beard es bajito y más bien rechoncho, y casi calvo), así que él lo atribuye a su Nobel. Y Patrice, su quinta mujer, diecinueve años menor, sabe de sus aventuras pero sigue viviendo con él, obtando por castigarle y pagarle con la misma moneda, es decir, echándose un amante. Y menuda se arma...
La novela transcurre entre los problemas maritales de Beard y su vida científica, en la que Beard ejerce de director en un centro de investigación de energías renovables, tema que aprovecha muy bien McEwan para dar un toque de atención sobre la situación actual desde un punto de vista humorístico.
Sin llegar a ser lo mejor que ha escrito McEwan, 'Solar' es una gran novela, perfectamente escrita (qué bien escribe McEwan), con humor, enredos y algunos giros argumentales inesperados, que hacen su lectura altamente recomendable.
" -No estás convencido. Veamos el peor de los casos. Imagina algo casi imposible: que mil se equivocan y que uno tiene razón, que los datos están todos sesgados, que no hay calentamiento. Es una ilusión colectiva de los científicos, o un complot. Y todavía nos quedan los antiguos sustitutos. Seguridad de la energía, contaminación del aire, máximo consumo de petróleo.
-Nadie va a comprarnos un panel exorbitante sólo porque el petróleo se va a acabar dentro de treinta años.
-¿Qué te pasa? ¿Tienes problemas en casa?
-Nada de eso. Sólo que después de haber trabajado tanto, salen en la tele unos tíos con bata blanca y dicen que el planeta no se está calentando. Me da pánico.
Beard puso la mano en el brazo de su amigo, un indicio seguro de que se había pasado de la raya.
-Escucha, Toby. Es una catástrofe. ¡Relájate!"
La historia está protagonizada por Michael Beard, de unos cincuenta años, físico teórico y ganador del Premio Nobel hace unos años por su contribución al mundo científico con su Combinación Beard-Einstein. Beard está ya en su quinto matrimonio, y éste tampoco es que vaya por buen camino. No tiene hijos y realmente nunca ha estado enamorado de ninguna de sus mujeres. El matrimonio no significa mucho para él, y en sus constantes viajes para dar conferencias y recibir homenajes, no se corta a la hora de hacer amantes. Pero este éxito con las mujeres no es debido precisamente a su físico (Beard es bajito y más bien rechoncho, y casi calvo), así que él lo atribuye a su Nobel. Y Patrice, su quinta mujer, diecinueve años menor, sabe de sus aventuras pero sigue viviendo con él, obtando por castigarle y pagarle con la misma moneda, es decir, echándose un amante. Y menuda se arma...
La novela transcurre entre los problemas maritales de Beard y su vida científica, en la que Beard ejerce de director en un centro de investigación de energías renovables, tema que aprovecha muy bien McEwan para dar un toque de atención sobre la situación actual desde un punto de vista humorístico.
Sin llegar a ser lo mejor que ha escrito McEwan, 'Solar' es una gran novela, perfectamente escrita (qué bien escribe McEwan), con humor, enredos y algunos giros argumentales inesperados, que hacen su lectura altamente recomendable.
" -No estás convencido. Veamos el peor de los casos. Imagina algo casi imposible: que mil se equivocan y que uno tiene razón, que los datos están todos sesgados, que no hay calentamiento. Es una ilusión colectiva de los científicos, o un complot. Y todavía nos quedan los antiguos sustitutos. Seguridad de la energía, contaminación del aire, máximo consumo de petróleo.
-Nadie va a comprarnos un panel exorbitante sólo porque el petróleo se va a acabar dentro de treinta años.
-¿Qué te pasa? ¿Tienes problemas en casa?
-Nada de eso. Sólo que después de haber trabajado tanto, salen en la tele unos tíos con bata blanca y dicen que el planeta no se está calentando. Me da pánico.
Beard puso la mano en el brazo de su amigo, un indicio seguro de que se había pasado de la raya.
-Escucha, Toby. Es una catástrofe. ¡Relájate!"
February 28, 2016
Out of all his novels, Solar, according to Ian McEwan himself, is the one that bombed in the United States. Before reading the novel, I wondered why this was so. Having read it, I see two possible reasons for this: one, that the efforts of the United States in the battle to save the planet are criticized (by the main character, Michael Beard) as being too ineffectual, or two: that there is so much scientific jargon in the novel - the importance of it in the aforementioned battle notwithstanding – that the story at times takes a back seat. To this layman’s eyes, it alternately swamped the story and lent it authenticity.
It is the story of a rotund, full-of-himself British scientist/misogynist who is on his way out of his fifth marriage and into obese middle age. He is smart, cynical and socially inept. His unsuccessful personal relations reminded me of characters in other of McEwan’s novels, though Beard is one his most selfish and least likeable characters.
Despite not really liking the story much, I nonetheless succumbed to McEwan’s storytelling ability: the laughable, implausible incident at the North Pole; the urban myth-like story from the train; the speech at The Savoy, which is surely McEwan’s own save-the-planet message. This last item – and the many scientific tidbits along the way – clearly demonstrated (as in many of his other novels) the extent to which McEwan has researched the subject matter of the novel. Like Beard, McEwan went to the North Pole to see for himself the results of increased global temperatures, and he has delved into extensive scientific reports and documents, the evidence of which was often beyond me but which I couldn’t help hoping that leading politicians around the world would read and take to heart.
Too bad that the struggle to save the planet, in literary terms, was in the hands of someone like Michael Beard, but according to McEwan the novel is a comedy showcasing the failings of human nature – globally and individually. Well, in that it is successful.
Impeccable prose in a story as heartless as stainless steel, this latter being presumably the reason why there seems to be such strong opinions against McEwan, something I’ve never quite understood.
It is the story of a rotund, full-of-himself British scientist/misogynist who is on his way out of his fifth marriage and into obese middle age. He is smart, cynical and socially inept. His unsuccessful personal relations reminded me of characters in other of McEwan’s novels, though Beard is one his most selfish and least likeable characters.
Despite not really liking the story much, I nonetheless succumbed to McEwan’s storytelling ability: the laughable, implausible incident at the North Pole; the urban myth-like story from the train; the speech at The Savoy, which is surely McEwan’s own save-the-planet message. This last item – and the many scientific tidbits along the way – clearly demonstrated (as in many of his other novels) the extent to which McEwan has researched the subject matter of the novel. Like Beard, McEwan went to the North Pole to see for himself the results of increased global temperatures, and he has delved into extensive scientific reports and documents, the evidence of which was often beyond me but which I couldn’t help hoping that leading politicians around the world would read and take to heart.
Too bad that the struggle to save the planet, in literary terms, was in the hands of someone like Michael Beard, but according to McEwan the novel is a comedy showcasing the failings of human nature – globally and individually. Well, in that it is successful.
Impeccable prose in a story as heartless as stainless steel, this latter being presumably the reason why there seems to be such strong opinions against McEwan, something I’ve never quite understood.
April 20, 2010
Nobel Laureate in Physics Michael Beard is a truly revolting piece of work: a slave to his appetites, whose progress through the novel is just one orgiastic frenzy of wenching, gourmandizing self-indulgence because, after all, curbing his sybaritic excess would just be too .... inconvenient. If you think it's a stroke of genius by Ian McEwan to use this troglodyte as a heavy-handed symbol of the kind of behavior that's causing global warming, then good for you. Let me know if you still feel that way after 300 pages spent with your nose forced into every appalling detail of Beard's ghastly descent. Personally, it felt like torment to me.
Don't get me wrong. McEwan's got the writing chops. There are whole paragraphs that are hilarious, or exquisitely written, or both. But my guess is that when you turn the page that begins the final section, you'll just wish the whole damned thing was over already.
I was really pissed off that McEwan pulls a Don Giovanni at the end, denying the reader the emotional catharsis of describing the gory details of Beard's downfall.
Two other aspects that bothered me:
Though McEwan has obviously done his homework to the extent of crafting sections about physics that are entirely plausible, I'm not sure to what end. It all seems a little pointless.
The notion that Beard is some kind of irresistible babe magnet is just too ludicrous to swallow. He's a pig. I sincerely doubt that Nobel prize is going to overcome his swinishness.
This book is another example where McEwan's talent seems to have been mischanneled. This is an intermittently amusing, but ultimately repulsive story which showcases McEwan's cleverness, but seems empty at its core.
ADDENDUM: When I think about it, this book was never going to work for me, as I detest books where the reader gets stuck in the mind of a particularly obnoxious character. I should probably develop some kind of brief coding for reviews of books like this, as I know other readers are not necessarily bothered as much by loathsome protagonists as I am.
Don't get me wrong. McEwan's got the writing chops. There are whole paragraphs that are hilarious, or exquisitely written, or both. But my guess is that when you turn the page that begins the final section, you'll just wish the whole damned thing was over already.
I was really pissed off that McEwan pulls a Don Giovanni at the end, denying the reader the emotional catharsis of describing the gory details of Beard's downfall.
Two other aspects that bothered me:
Though McEwan has obviously done his homework to the extent of crafting sections about physics that are entirely plausible, I'm not sure to what end. It all seems a little pointless.
The notion that Beard is some kind of irresistible babe magnet is just too ludicrous to swallow. He's a pig. I sincerely doubt that Nobel prize is going to overcome his swinishness.
This book is another example where McEwan's talent seems to have been mischanneled. This is an intermittently amusing, but ultimately repulsive story which showcases McEwan's cleverness, but seems empty at its core.
ADDENDUM: When I think about it, this book was never going to work for me, as I detest books where the reader gets stuck in the mind of a particularly obnoxious character. I should probably develop some kind of brief coding for reviews of books like this, as I know other readers are not necessarily bothered as much by loathsome protagonists as I am.
January 1, 2013
This is the first McEwan I have read (not sure how I’ve avoided him up till now, because I have a few on my shelf waiting to be read). It was a fairly easy read, but I admit I wasn’t impressed, even though McEwan writes well. It is supposed to be satire and comedy and I know the protagonist, Michael Beard is not supposed to be likeable (that bit is successful), but for me the whole did not work.
The novel is in three sections set in 2000, 2005 and 2009 seeing Beard move from 53 to 62; from the demise of his fifth marriage to an ending that is pretty much left open. The climate change part is pretty much incidental and rests on Beard (a Nobel laureate) developing/nicking a way of mimicking photosynthesis to generate power. Most of the novel revolves around Beard’s complex and convoluted love life and there is no getting away from it as you spend a great deal of time in Beard’s head. He has no real care for the women he uses, is incapable of being faithful, knows no boundaries to his appetites and is thoroughly self centred. As an aside, Beard is in his 50s, overweight and seems to be infernally attractive to women, much younger women. This may be authorial or more likely male wish fulfilment (mind you, it’s not a phenomenon I’ve noticed!)
On completing the book, it just felt very slight and self indulgent with little point. I’m sure there are men like Beard around (too many of them) whose only real sorrow is getting caught, but in the context of this novel, it just didn’t work. The small glimmer of redemption for Beard, his young daughter and her unconditional love for him, also fell flat because it felt like an afterthought. On reflection maybe the book would have been better without the three time sections and without some of the background of climate change. It felt like McEwan really wanted to write about Beard’s sex life and his relationships with women and didn’t weave in the other strands. It was just frustrating, irritating and left me cold
The novel is in three sections set in 2000, 2005 and 2009 seeing Beard move from 53 to 62; from the demise of his fifth marriage to an ending that is pretty much left open. The climate change part is pretty much incidental and rests on Beard (a Nobel laureate) developing/nicking a way of mimicking photosynthesis to generate power. Most of the novel revolves around Beard’s complex and convoluted love life and there is no getting away from it as you spend a great deal of time in Beard’s head. He has no real care for the women he uses, is incapable of being faithful, knows no boundaries to his appetites and is thoroughly self centred. As an aside, Beard is in his 50s, overweight and seems to be infernally attractive to women, much younger women. This may be authorial or more likely male wish fulfilment (mind you, it’s not a phenomenon I’ve noticed!)
On completing the book, it just felt very slight and self indulgent with little point. I’m sure there are men like Beard around (too many of them) whose only real sorrow is getting caught, but in the context of this novel, it just didn’t work. The small glimmer of redemption for Beard, his young daughter and her unconditional love for him, also fell flat because it felt like an afterthought. On reflection maybe the book would have been better without the three time sections and without some of the background of climate change. It felt like McEwan really wanted to write about Beard’s sex life and his relationships with women and didn’t weave in the other strands. It was just frustrating, irritating and left me cold
March 29, 2018
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Michael Beard is a real a-hole—a user of women, an idea thief, and a framing felon (if there is such a thing) responsible for imprisoning an innocent man. But he views the consequences of his misdeeds as “distractions” “in a conspiracy to prevent him from making his gift to the world. None of this was his fault.” (p. 275)
I read this book slowly, in small bits, and I never had trouble retaining all the bits—which would not have been the case with such a work by a lesser writer than McEwan. For the longest time, I doubted that the bits would ever weave together. Silly me! This is Ian McEwan!
Although this novel is humorous, the out-loud laughs were few compared to Nutshell (not even close to that raucousness). And even though Solar doesn’t have the nuance of my favorite McEwan books (Saturday, The Children Act, Atonement), I thoroughly enjoyed it, was never bored by all the detail, and rooted for the a-hole for reasons I cannot and don’t really want to explain. Yet I was satisfied with his comeuppance. That is some feat—to write a protagonist that the reader equally roots for and against.
I read this book slowly, in small bits, and I never had trouble retaining all the bits—which would not have been the case with such a work by a lesser writer than McEwan. For the longest time, I doubted that the bits would ever weave together. Silly me! This is Ian McEwan!
Although this novel is humorous, the out-loud laughs were few compared to Nutshell (not even close to that raucousness). And even though Solar doesn’t have the nuance of my favorite McEwan books (Saturday, The Children Act, Atonement), I thoroughly enjoyed it, was never bored by all the detail, and rooted for the a-hole for reasons I cannot and don’t really want to explain. Yet I was satisfied with his comeuppance. That is some feat—to write a protagonist that the reader equally roots for and against.
October 24, 2014
Great satire of a scientist who is all too human in his appetites, insecurities, and problems in relationships. The protagonist, Michael Beard, is a Nobel laureate in quantum physics who has run out of ideas and bumbles through marriage after marriage, a lovable misanthrope and solipsist. McEwan portrays very realistically how such a physicist might hitch his sail to the movement for renewable energy, artificial photosynthesis in particular. We root for him as his personal disasters threaten his progress and, indirectly, that of the world itself to find a solution. This feels like a full bodied novel with heart rather that the more cerebral novella-like sense of other books I have read of his.
February 18, 2021
Bolca bilim ve ilişkiler üzerine bir roman.
Nobelli bilim insanı Beard iflah olmaz bir aşık, pek çalışkan olmayan bir fizikçi ve intikamdan hoşlanan biri.
Çok keyifli bir romandı, cinayet ekseninde döner mi dedim ama, yok. Kadınlar ve bilimin arasına da iklim değişikliği, küresel ısınma vs sokarak yine derdini anlatmaya, farkındalık yaratmaya çalışmış sağolsun.
Seviyor bu işleri... ❤️
Nobelli bilim insanı Beard iflah olmaz bir aşık, pek çalışkan olmayan bir fizikçi ve intikamdan hoşlanan biri.
Çok keyifli bir romandı, cinayet ekseninde döner mi dedim ama, yok. Kadınlar ve bilimin arasına da iklim değişikliği, küresel ısınma vs sokarak yine derdini anlatmaya, farkındalık yaratmaya çalışmış sağolsun.
Seviyor bu işleri... ❤️
July 18, 2021
This was an interesting McEwan novel, and I wondered after finishing it, what does he really think about science, so I listened to a few interviews that he had given about the book. It turns out that his beliefs align with mine, in that he feels it is necessary to be educated both in the humanities and in the sciences in order to properly appreciate and understand the world. It is an interesting fact that most Nobel Prize winners in STEM subjects are also at least conversant in some subject completely unrelated to to STEM, whether that is music, poetry, theater, or literature (see the book, Range, for a detailed discussion of this phenomenon). It is also true that the miraculous gifts of understanding that produced the prize-winning work of Einstein, Heisenberg, Fermi, Feynman, Dirac, or Goedel uniformly occurred when the scientists were young men; Einstein produced Relativity at the age of 26 and the rest of his life was spent refining his ideas, but he really did nothing as groundbreaking as in 1905 ever again. This is the pattern; there is something special about a youthful human mind's ability to process mathematics and science.
So his protagonist, Michael Beard, is typical of a certain type of Nobel winner, not Einstein, not Fermi (one is reminded a bit of James Watson), basking in the accomplishments of his younger self, dining out on his reputation, and finding lovers the same way. This book is a comedy in the sense that, as McEwan says, Dante meant it, as Beard stumbles from one project to another radiating the glow of the Nobel upon whatever new venture he participates in, and contributing little else, until finally his lies begin to catch up with him. McEwan takes a dark, one might say realistic view of the future with regard to climate change, and he compares the inability of university-educated people to keep a "boot room" on a ship in the Arctic organized, to the inability of the world to do anything effective about climate change. It's a valid point.
I enjoyed this, though I preferred On Chesil Beach.
So his protagonist, Michael Beard, is typical of a certain type of Nobel winner, not Einstein, not Fermi (one is reminded a bit of James Watson), basking in the accomplishments of his younger self, dining out on his reputation, and finding lovers the same way. This book is a comedy in the sense that, as McEwan says, Dante meant it, as Beard stumbles from one project to another radiating the glow of the Nobel upon whatever new venture he participates in, and contributing little else, until finally his lies begin to catch up with him. McEwan takes a dark, one might say realistic view of the future with regard to climate change, and he compares the inability of university-educated people to keep a "boot room" on a ship in the Arctic organized, to the inability of the world to do anything effective about climate change. It's a valid point.
I enjoyed this, though I preferred On Chesil Beach.
July 23, 2016
Not bad at all :)
The kinda 3* you're happy to spend time with, though. McEwan is a comfy writer.
http://4archive.org/board/lit/thread/...
I know most reviewers are happy to have spent time with a book if they end up giving it 3* but I guess I just value my time more than they do ahahaha!! xD!!
If climate change kills us all (global warming is a scarier term, but we still need something worse, like worldwide asphyxiation or something), let it be said that novelist Ian McEwan pontificated comically on it!!
The kinda 3* you're happy to spend time with, though. McEwan is a comfy writer.
http://4archive.org/board/lit/thread/...
I know most reviewers are happy to have spent time with a book if they end up giving it 3* but I guess I just value my time more than they do ahahaha!! xD!!
If climate change kills us all (global warming is a scarier term, but we still need something worse, like worldwide asphyxiation or something), let it be said that novelist Ian McEwan pontificated comically on it!!
Read
June 13, 2017The publishing world makes such a fuss when Ian McEwan produces a new book that I succumb to the hype every time and read the latest one. When I heard that he was tackling climate change this time, I wondered if this would be the novel to convince me that I've been wrong about him all along as, although I admire his style and his research skills, I've always found his stories to be unpleasantly menacing while bordering on the ridiculous, a combination which doesn't make for much reader satisfaction. It is clear that he diid enormous research for this one but it seems a pity to use it on such an unlikely plot. And I was disappointed with how he treats the climate change theme. In the end it seemed to me just a jumbled send up of the scientific community.
December 19, 2012
I think my first Goodreads review has to be defending this old favourite, which is absolutely in my top three Ian McEwan books and also my top twenty books ever. You're not interested in me, but when someone who reads a significant amount has a book among their all-time favourites that book must have some redeeming qualities, I find.
Solar is the story of Michael Beard. Michael Beard has been characterised among reviewers and Ian McEwan fans as "obnoxious", and they say this ruins the book, because we spend all of the relatively long novel in his company. I must respectfully disagree, though I haven't read anyone who agrees with me. I'll come right out and say it - Solar is a long book which is an analogy for global warming. But you knew that. And Michael Beard reflects this, in a way many seem to have wantonly ignored. He is not obnoxious - he is entirely uncaring, disconnected from the human experience. He crushes things and people in his path without remorse, it is true, but he also does it without vindictiveness. Michael Beard is a perfect reflection of the benign indifference of the global warming phenomenon and reviewers who term Michael obnoxious - would I dare say they are a perfect reflection of those who choose to ignore reality in favour of ease?
Solar is a fabulous book. Some call it slow: you may find it slow. I did not, at any point. Clearly, I stand alone. Nonetheless, there are moments of brilliance in Solar, and there are moments of slightly lesser brilliance. But I didn't find any paragraphs which didn't give me the old chill of a good Ian McEwan, from his A Child in Time and Black Dogs phase. And the ending - I will avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say (or will it suffice? I can only hope) that critics calling it abrupt and unsatisfying are. Well. Misguided. I found it one of the most poignant endings I've recently experienced. I sat on my bed and cried. And that's a wonderful thing, especially for something so scientific like global warming to bring such intense human emotion out of me.
Solar is well worth a read, because for some people it will just be another book and for some it will be extraordinary. And if you, like me, are one of those who find it extraordinary, you don't want to miss out on the feeling it will bring you.
It was a cold night in the middle of November and I had just finished the book I read after Solar. It was a good book, and yet at its moment of climax I remember distinctly thinking "I miss Michael Beard". Solar haunted me then, and it still does now, because it resonates, and that is all I ask for.
Solar is the story of Michael Beard. Michael Beard has been characterised among reviewers and Ian McEwan fans as "obnoxious", and they say this ruins the book, because we spend all of the relatively long novel in his company. I must respectfully disagree, though I haven't read anyone who agrees with me. I'll come right out and say it - Solar is a long book which is an analogy for global warming. But you knew that. And Michael Beard reflects this, in a way many seem to have wantonly ignored. He is not obnoxious - he is entirely uncaring, disconnected from the human experience. He crushes things and people in his path without remorse, it is true, but he also does it without vindictiveness. Michael Beard is a perfect reflection of the benign indifference of the global warming phenomenon and reviewers who term Michael obnoxious - would I dare say they are a perfect reflection of those who choose to ignore reality in favour of ease?
Solar is a fabulous book. Some call it slow: you may find it slow. I did not, at any point. Clearly, I stand alone. Nonetheless, there are moments of brilliance in Solar, and there are moments of slightly lesser brilliance. But I didn't find any paragraphs which didn't give me the old chill of a good Ian McEwan, from his A Child in Time and Black Dogs phase. And the ending - I will avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say (or will it suffice? I can only hope) that critics calling it abrupt and unsatisfying are. Well. Misguided. I found it one of the most poignant endings I've recently experienced. I sat on my bed and cried. And that's a wonderful thing, especially for something so scientific like global warming to bring such intense human emotion out of me.
Solar is well worth a read, because for some people it will just be another book and for some it will be extraordinary. And if you, like me, are one of those who find it extraordinary, you don't want to miss out on the feeling it will bring you.
It was a cold night in the middle of November and I had just finished the book I read after Solar. It was a good book, and yet at its moment of climax I remember distinctly thinking "I miss Michael Beard". Solar haunted me then, and it still does now, because it resonates, and that is all I ask for.
July 16, 2011
Non posso dire che non mi sia piaciuto, ma non sto nemmeno stappando lo champagne.
Andiamo per ordine.
McEwan stilisticamente parlando è a dir poco brillante.
Anche se parlasse della passeggiata col suo cane, riuscirebbe a far resuscitare i morti con quelle sue frasi che sembrano buttate così a caso, come quando di getto si tira giù la lista della spesa, ma che sono dissacranti, taglienti e ironiche, e a maggior ragione illuminanti. E vi assicuro, che raggiungere questi risultati tutti insieme, in una frase ogni due (dai, facciamo tre) per trecento pagine, è da veri fuoriclasse.
Poi, la vedete la copertina? Un bel Sole in primo piano.
Eh, ma mica penserete di cavarvela con la copertina e basta vero?
No, perché McEwan è giusto un pelo meticoloso sui riferimenti tecnico-nozionistici.
Roba che alla fine del libro, avrete due opzioni: se siete interessati minimamente all’aspetto scientifico, otterrete la laurea in fisica, se siete neofiti e cocci come me, per simpatia vi ritroverete perlomeno abbronzati. Potenza dell’elioterapia.
La trama poi è banalmente geniale. Un uomo meschino, pigro e lussurioso, che pensa cose meschine, pigre e lussuriose per tutta la vita, anche quando gli vengono offerte occasioni per redimersi. Voi direte: dove sta la genialità? Sta nel fatto che McEwan ha preso cose e situazioni che viviamo tutti i giorni, ha pensato brutture mediocri che in momenti di cinismo aberrante pensiamo anche noi (dalla lotta corpo a corpo con chi ci sorpassa nella fila al checkin, ai meccanismi egoistici che si innescano allorquando vogliamo tenerci stretti una situazione che ci fa comodo, fosse anche un matrimonio!) e poi con molta scioltezza ha fotografato questi pensieri fugaci, che noi non riusciremo mai né a immortalare, né tanto meno a confessare, qualora avessimo la botta di culo di riuscire a catturarli e a isolarli.
Facendo quindi un bilancio veloce sui punti su citati, la morale è altalenante ma decisiva. La trovate bella comoda proprio in fondo al libro, esattamente nell’ultimissima frase.
E oscilla tra il detto “Vulpes pilum mutat, non mores” alla favola di Pierino e il lupo.
Da questa recensione purtroppo però rimane fuori l’aggettivo “coinvolgente” che mi fa levare un paio di stelle dal punteggio. Ma non mi arrendo, le premesse perché McEwan mi piaccia ci sono.
Perciò, Au revoir Ian, ci vediamo (io fiduciosa, tu magistrale come sempre)su un altro tuo libro.
P.S. Per chi il libro l'avesse già letto: non vi ricorda niente? ;)
http://youtu.be/hHg4vjsGArk
Andiamo per ordine.
McEwan stilisticamente parlando è a dir poco brillante.
Anche se parlasse della passeggiata col suo cane, riuscirebbe a far resuscitare i morti con quelle sue frasi che sembrano buttate così a caso, come quando di getto si tira giù la lista della spesa, ma che sono dissacranti, taglienti e ironiche, e a maggior ragione illuminanti. E vi assicuro, che raggiungere questi risultati tutti insieme, in una frase ogni due (dai, facciamo tre) per trecento pagine, è da veri fuoriclasse.
Poi, la vedete la copertina? Un bel Sole in primo piano.
Eh, ma mica penserete di cavarvela con la copertina e basta vero?
No, perché McEwan è giusto un pelo meticoloso sui riferimenti tecnico-nozionistici.
Roba che alla fine del libro, avrete due opzioni: se siete interessati minimamente all’aspetto scientifico, otterrete la laurea in fisica, se siete neofiti e cocci come me, per simpatia vi ritroverete perlomeno abbronzati. Potenza dell’elioterapia.
La trama poi è banalmente geniale. Un uomo meschino, pigro e lussurioso, che pensa cose meschine, pigre e lussuriose per tutta la vita, anche quando gli vengono offerte occasioni per redimersi. Voi direte: dove sta la genialità? Sta nel fatto che McEwan ha preso cose e situazioni che viviamo tutti i giorni, ha pensato brutture mediocri che in momenti di cinismo aberrante pensiamo anche noi (dalla lotta corpo a corpo con chi ci sorpassa nella fila al checkin, ai meccanismi egoistici che si innescano allorquando vogliamo tenerci stretti una situazione che ci fa comodo, fosse anche un matrimonio!) e poi con molta scioltezza ha fotografato questi pensieri fugaci, che noi non riusciremo mai né a immortalare, né tanto meno a confessare, qualora avessimo la botta di culo di riuscire a catturarli e a isolarli.
Facendo quindi un bilancio veloce sui punti su citati, la morale è altalenante ma decisiva. La trovate bella comoda proprio in fondo al libro, esattamente nell’ultimissima frase.
E oscilla tra il detto “Vulpes pilum mutat, non mores” alla favola di Pierino e il lupo.
Da questa recensione purtroppo però rimane fuori l’aggettivo “coinvolgente” che mi fa levare un paio di stelle dal punteggio. Ma non mi arrendo, le premesse perché McEwan mi piaccia ci sono.
Perciò, Au revoir Ian, ci vediamo (io fiduciosa, tu magistrale come sempre)su un altro tuo libro.
P.S. Per chi il libro l'avesse già letto: non vi ricorda niente? ;)
http://youtu.be/hHg4vjsGArk
May 14, 2010
A Nobel winning physicist is approaching the descending side of his life. Michael Beard’s had five wives with each marriage leaving a bigger pile of emotional junk in its wake. He can’t or won’t grow up. He just stays in motion hoping it will all sort itself out. It doesn’t. It gets worse. By the end of the book there are sweltering piles of personal and professional cacao threatening to fall on him.
In classic McEwen style there is a pivot incident that changes or enhances the trajectory of Beard’s life. The ensuing tragedy begets a kind of second life to both his career and his personal realm. There are funny scenes in the book but no belly laughs. They’re more of a one side of the mouth raised and a strangled guffaw type. Honestly this guy is so pathetic you want to jump into the book and drag him to safety, along with some of his hapless ‘victims’.
This wasn’t one of my favorite McEwen novels but I still loved it. Especially wonderful was his description of southwest America. This is where his wry sense of humor really goes hot. The heat of this lonely area with its orange sunsets, the contrasts between the hyper cooled indoors and the stalking blanket of heat outside, the people who are at once expansive in their open hearts and provincial in their viewpoints. When you think of someone who’s reached such a level as Beard’s character there’s a certain perception or expectation of sophistication and maturity. Beard defies such characterization. Toto’s pulled the curtain away, by the end Beard is standing naked with a spotlight on him. Solar indeed.
In classic McEwen style there is a pivot incident that changes or enhances the trajectory of Beard’s life. The ensuing tragedy begets a kind of second life to both his career and his personal realm. There are funny scenes in the book but no belly laughs. They’re more of a one side of the mouth raised and a strangled guffaw type. Honestly this guy is so pathetic you want to jump into the book and drag him to safety, along with some of his hapless ‘victims’.
This wasn’t one of my favorite McEwen novels but I still loved it. Especially wonderful was his description of southwest America. This is where his wry sense of humor really goes hot. The heat of this lonely area with its orange sunsets, the contrasts between the hyper cooled indoors and the stalking blanket of heat outside, the people who are at once expansive in their open hearts and provincial in their viewpoints. When you think of someone who’s reached such a level as Beard’s character there’s a certain perception or expectation of sophistication and maturity. Beard defies such characterization. Toto’s pulled the curtain away, by the end Beard is standing naked with a spotlight on him. Solar indeed.
January 17, 2018
Auf Seite 198 breche ich nun ab.
Bisher konnten mich die Romane von Ian McEwan gut unterhalten. Doch mit Solar ist meine Grenze im Moment erreicht. Der Hauptcharakter ist ein Unsympath sondergleichen, der sich für den tollsten Hecht im Teich hält und erstaunlicherweise auch noch Erfolg bei den Frauen hat.
Jedes Mal, wenn ich denke: jetzt kommt Fahrt in die Geschichte und es passiert mal bisschen was vom Klappentext, dann legt McEwan den Rückwärtsgang ein und schwafelt erst mal ohne Ende von seinem ach so tollem Protagonisten. Das will ich mir nicht mehr antun.
Bisher konnten mich die Romane von Ian McEwan gut unterhalten. Doch mit Solar ist meine Grenze im Moment erreicht. Der Hauptcharakter ist ein Unsympath sondergleichen, der sich für den tollsten Hecht im Teich hält und erstaunlicherweise auch noch Erfolg bei den Frauen hat.
Jedes Mal, wenn ich denke: jetzt kommt Fahrt in die Geschichte und es passiert mal bisschen was vom Klappentext, dann legt McEwan den Rückwärtsgang ein und schwafelt erst mal ohne Ende von seinem ach so tollem Protagonisten. Das will ich mir nicht mehr antun.
November 17, 2020
Sabun köpüğü denilen türden bir roman, hızla okunuyor, mizah dozu iyi ayarlanmış. Biraz bilim (fizik), biraz sosyal farkındalık (iklim değişikliği), biraz dedektiflik (bir cinayet), biraz aşk ve bol seks ortaya bu romanı çıkarmış. Ian Mc Ewan usta bir kalem, sağlam yazıyor ve kurguluyor. Çok üretiyor, bu ise eserlerindeki kaliteyi düşürüyor sanki, ilk kitaplarındaki tadı alamadığımı söyleyebilirim. Herşeye rağmen kafa boşaltıcı eğlenceli bir kitap. 3.5 tan 4.
March 9, 2020
Nobel scientist and philanderer finds a new way of using solar energy to fuel the planet. Five times married he is a bit of a playa despite being short, bald and fat.
I struggled to get into this, or warm to the characters. Competent story, no more.
I struggled to get into this, or warm to the characters. Competent story, no more.
December 28, 2015
In this satirical novel Ian McEwan creates the unlikeable Michael Beard, Nobel Prize winning Physicist. With his best work behind him, Michael is an overweight womaniser who lives off speaking engagements and memberships of Boards. At the start of the novel he has recently been appointed to head a new Centre looking for novel ways of generating renewable energy.
For some reason Michael Beard is a magnet to younger women. He is currently on his 5th marriage and, for some reason that is not clear to me, has had a multitude of mistresses and one night stands, despite his acknowledged slovenliness. He is not really engaged in finding solutions to climate change and barely pays any attention to his work. All this changes when one day he returns from a conference to find one of his younger colleagues in his living room dressed only in a dressing gown.
In creating Michael Beard, the author has created a truly despicable man, one who cheats on his wives and partners as well as his employer and colleagues. He is opportunistic and seems to get away with it until his past starts to catch up with him. While I think McEwan is trying to point out the comparison with our politicians disinterest and failure in acceptng and dealing with climate change, I failed to wholly engage with this novel. Although there were some rays of brilliance amongst the dross, this isn't one of McEwan's best novels.3.5 ★
July 24, 2016
4.5 stars.
I am not a book snob, and I will devour young adult page turners with the best of them. I also let myself eat McDonalds drive-thru on road trips, and even enjoy it. But reading McEwan is like switching gears and having a 12-course meal. Each bite thoughtful and balanced, and all part of a cohesive meal. I love that, even as a really fast reader, I have to read EVERY SINGLE sentence of his work. Because each sentence brings me that much closer to understanding his characters and how they tick. Each sentence has its own purpose and place, and not one is unnecessary.
The pudgy, egotistical, brilliant physicist hero is a portrait of self-denial (can rationalize away any unpleasant facet of himself) but also a lack of denial, because he's an impetuous glutton. I think some readers must like their protagonists, or at least relate to them on some level, to enjoy the book. I used to think this applied to me. It doesn't! I hated this sorry sack of shit but loved his story. Yay!
(Oh, and the potato chip scene was one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. My silent laughing/bed shaking woke my hubby. Even he chuckled in his sleep at my retelling..)
I am not a book snob, and I will devour young adult page turners with the best of them. I also let myself eat McDonalds drive-thru on road trips, and even enjoy it. But reading McEwan is like switching gears and having a 12-course meal. Each bite thoughtful and balanced, and all part of a cohesive meal. I love that, even as a really fast reader, I have to read EVERY SINGLE sentence of his work. Because each sentence brings me that much closer to understanding his characters and how they tick. Each sentence has its own purpose and place, and not one is unnecessary.
The pudgy, egotistical, brilliant physicist hero is a portrait of self-denial (can rationalize away any unpleasant facet of himself) but also a lack of denial, because he's an impetuous glutton. I think some readers must like their protagonists, or at least relate to them on some level, to enjoy the book. I used to think this applied to me. It doesn't! I hated this sorry sack of shit but loved his story. Yay!
(Oh, and the potato chip scene was one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. My silent laughing/bed shaking woke my hubby. Even he chuckled in his sleep at my retelling..)
November 17, 2017
Global Warming, Creative Cooling
Michael Beard, the protagonist of Ian McEwan's long-awaited new novel, is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Fifty-something when the book opens, he has become a minor establishment figure, chair of government committees and keynote speaker at conferences, but he is all too aware that his original work is long behind him. By the second of the book's three sections, he has reinvented himself as a crusader in the fight against global warming, and the final part takes place as he is about to open a ground-breaking solar energy project in the New Mexico desert.
But Beard's private life is something else. Alcoholic, overweight, self-deluding, and compulsively promiscuous, his fifth marriage is already on the rocks, and disaster seems to follow him wherever he goes. Unusually for McEwan, the tone of this novel is predominantly comic, but it is a queasy kind of comedy, with a dislikable central character (I won't say hero), and many moments of embarrassment as we are forced to watch his excruciatingly wrong choices. Only in the third part did I find myself with much sympathy for Beard, as he recalls the first romance of his student days (a passage published as a separate story in the New Yorker), and appears in his sixties to have learned something from his previous mistakes with women -- perhaps. But don't look for some sublimely transcendent ending. As nemesis pursues Beard from every possible direction, McEwan has some plot twists in store, but they do not relieve the predominant negativity of the book as a whole.
The jacket note asks: "Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?" Good question, but it is not one that McEwan really addresses. For it is hard to believe that Beard's post-Nobel scientific achievement is much more solid than his marital constancy. He talks a good game, to be sure. There are long disquisitions early in the book that may bore or baffle readers not familiar with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time or Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. And I am prepared to believe that some of the concepts tossed around in the middle part are indeed close to the cutting edge. But they do not convince me that Beard's project for artificial photosynthesis is technologically feasible within the implied time-span, and indeed McEwan goes out of his way to dress the project in tawdry trappings. So without much solid competence to set against Beard's personal fecklessness, the novel ceases to be a dialectic between private and public, and turns instead into a picture of disorder no less depressing than the mushrooms growing out of the floorboards in Beard's trash-strewn London flat.
Nobelist Michael Beard is not the first of McEwan's public professionals with feet of clay, but he is the first whose professional eminence comes into question. One has no doubts about the abilities of the politician or eminent composer in Amsterdam, or the brain surgeon in Saturday ; their personal mistakes are set against their public distinction. But this book is about failure on both fronts, even more than in its predecessor, On Chesil Beach, where an early private failure was somewhat redeemed by later success, or at least acceptance and understanding. I cannot help seeing this as the author's failure also. Yes, there are the qualities one expects from McEwan: intelligent dialogue, human insight, a sixth-sense for unexpected violence, and some wonderful passages of description. The second part opens, for instance, with a description of London seen from a stacked plane "turning like an intricately-slotted space station in majestic self-sufficiency" that seems an answer to the ground-level view of a landing aircraft that opens Saturday. From any other author, this would be a four- or even five-star book. But from McEwan, despite the immediacy of global warming as an apparent subject, I fear it shows only the cooling of his old creative fires.
Michael Beard, the protagonist of Ian McEwan's long-awaited new novel, is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Fifty-something when the book opens, he has become a minor establishment figure, chair of government committees and keynote speaker at conferences, but he is all too aware that his original work is long behind him. By the second of the book's three sections, he has reinvented himself as a crusader in the fight against global warming, and the final part takes place as he is about to open a ground-breaking solar energy project in the New Mexico desert.
But Beard's private life is something else. Alcoholic, overweight, self-deluding, and compulsively promiscuous, his fifth marriage is already on the rocks, and disaster seems to follow him wherever he goes. Unusually for McEwan, the tone of this novel is predominantly comic, but it is a queasy kind of comedy, with a dislikable central character (I won't say hero), and many moments of embarrassment as we are forced to watch his excruciatingly wrong choices. Only in the third part did I find myself with much sympathy for Beard, as he recalls the first romance of his student days (a passage published as a separate story in the New Yorker), and appears in his sixties to have learned something from his previous mistakes with women -- perhaps. But don't look for some sublimely transcendent ending. As nemesis pursues Beard from every possible direction, McEwan has some plot twists in store, but they do not relieve the predominant negativity of the book as a whole.
The jacket note asks: "Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?" Good question, but it is not one that McEwan really addresses. For it is hard to believe that Beard's post-Nobel scientific achievement is much more solid than his marital constancy. He talks a good game, to be sure. There are long disquisitions early in the book that may bore or baffle readers not familiar with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time or Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. And I am prepared to believe that some of the concepts tossed around in the middle part are indeed close to the cutting edge. But they do not convince me that Beard's project for artificial photosynthesis is technologically feasible within the implied time-span, and indeed McEwan goes out of his way to dress the project in tawdry trappings. So without much solid competence to set against Beard's personal fecklessness, the novel ceases to be a dialectic between private and public, and turns instead into a picture of disorder no less depressing than the mushrooms growing out of the floorboards in Beard's trash-strewn London flat.
Nobelist Michael Beard is not the first of McEwan's public professionals with feet of clay, but he is the first whose professional eminence comes into question. One has no doubts about the abilities of the politician or eminent composer in Amsterdam, or the brain surgeon in Saturday ; their personal mistakes are set against their public distinction. But this book is about failure on both fronts, even more than in its predecessor, On Chesil Beach, where an early private failure was somewhat redeemed by later success, or at least acceptance and understanding. I cannot help seeing this as the author's failure also. Yes, there are the qualities one expects from McEwan: intelligent dialogue, human insight, a sixth-sense for unexpected violence, and some wonderful passages of description. The second part opens, for instance, with a description of London seen from a stacked plane "turning like an intricately-slotted space station in majestic self-sufficiency" that seems an answer to the ground-level view of a landing aircraft that opens Saturday. From any other author, this would be a four- or even five-star book. But from McEwan, despite the immediacy of global warming as an apparent subject, I fear it shows only the cooling of his old creative fires.
February 20, 2012
It's been well-documented that Michael Beard, the protagonist of Ian McEwan's novel, Solar, is one of McEwan's more unlikable characters. But then I think that McEwan generally likes the unlikable-I find Briony from Atonement close to unbearable, completely so after she's grown. I can hardly think of a character of his that I actually like.
Despite this, I like McEwan very much. His writing is near pitch-perfect. And there's something freeing in seeing the seedier side of humanity at the center of his stories as they-we-are the center of their-our-lives. His characters are flawed in the direction of barely salvageable. They're not excitingly "dark", just selfish and self-serving in the banal of ways, although this sometimes leads to devastating consequences.
Beard may be the apotheosis of this type of character. Not quite "perfectly" bad, not evil, but unbearably self-indulgent, with a record of past brilliance which he is ready to dine off the rest of his life until a series of circumstances-and actions as well, though he might barely acknowledge it-give him an unearned fresh lease on fame and scientific prestige.
As an English major, I read of Beard's dismissal of the arts- "From the moment he won Maisie, he was intellectually free"-and wondered, what if in his campaign of seduction in which he studied Milton to win the girl, he'd discovered another world? What if it had opened him up instead of confirming his smugness? But then, he'd hardly be the self-satisfied character he is and this book would not exist.
Solar has flashes of poetry as well as consistently fine writing; in the inevitable airport (a location I have to admit to loving as both liminal and mundane), Beard muses, In an airport, of course, "He was thinking of that time [right after college], the way one does on long journeys when rootlessness and boredom, lack of sleep or routine can summon from out of nowhere random stretches of the past, make them as real as a haunting. And he was almost there now, here, in the dining room of the Randolph, in suit and tie and the white shirt he had ineptly ironed himself."
Despite all this, and understanding so many of the reviews I've read, I deeply enjoyed this book. I even (for reasons unclear to me) came to care about Beard. At least a little.
Despite this, I like McEwan very much. His writing is near pitch-perfect. And there's something freeing in seeing the seedier side of humanity at the center of his stories as they-we-are the center of their-our-lives. His characters are flawed in the direction of barely salvageable. They're not excitingly "dark", just selfish and self-serving in the banal of ways, although this sometimes leads to devastating consequences.
Beard may be the apotheosis of this type of character. Not quite "perfectly" bad, not evil, but unbearably self-indulgent, with a record of past brilliance which he is ready to dine off the rest of his life until a series of circumstances-and actions as well, though he might barely acknowledge it-give him an unearned fresh lease on fame and scientific prestige.
As an English major, I read of Beard's dismissal of the arts- "From the moment he won Maisie, he was intellectually free"-and wondered, what if in his campaign of seduction in which he studied Milton to win the girl, he'd discovered another world? What if it had opened him up instead of confirming his smugness? But then, he'd hardly be the self-satisfied character he is and this book would not exist.
Solar has flashes of poetry as well as consistently fine writing; in the inevitable airport (a location I have to admit to loving as both liminal and mundane), Beard muses, In an airport, of course, "He was thinking of that time [right after college], the way one does on long journeys when rootlessness and boredom, lack of sleep or routine can summon from out of nowhere random stretches of the past, make them as real as a haunting. And he was almost there now, here, in the dining room of the Randolph, in suit and tie and the white shirt he had ineptly ironed himself."
Despite all this, and understanding so many of the reviews I've read, I deeply enjoyed this book. I even (for reasons unclear to me) came to care about Beard. At least a little.
July 27, 2020
I wonder if I have ever read a book by Ian McEwan with a really likable character? If I have, it must have slipped my mind, and something tells me that I will not forget Michael Beard any time soon.
He is middle aged, overweight and not particularly attractive, but apparently charismatic and egocentric to the bone. His professional career, once so brilliant, has culminated many years ago, and since then, he has been living off the dividends of his former accomplishments rather than achieving anything else. He has a tendency to make ridiculous choices, he is unconcerned by the truth or fidelity and his boundless vanity is his only guide. All this can be hilarious or pathetic or tragically stupid, or sometimes all three at the same time. On top of that, our hero doesn't really learn from what we would consider his mistakes, despite a significant passage of time. He remains just as he ever was, egocentric and ridicules - with change and development reserved for lesser creatures then his mighty self…. And yet, I not only liked this book, but also developed somewhat positive feelings for Michael. He might be pathetic but at the same time he is tragically human. A skewed picture of giving in to temptations and running from responsibilities.
He is middle aged, overweight and not particularly attractive, but apparently charismatic and egocentric to the bone. His professional career, once so brilliant, has culminated many years ago, and since then, he has been living off the dividends of his former accomplishments rather than achieving anything else. He has a tendency to make ridiculous choices, he is unconcerned by the truth or fidelity and his boundless vanity is his only guide. All this can be hilarious or pathetic or tragically stupid, or sometimes all three at the same time. On top of that, our hero doesn't really learn from what we would consider his mistakes, despite a significant passage of time. He remains just as he ever was, egocentric and ridicules - with change and development reserved for lesser creatures then his mighty self…. And yet, I not only liked this book, but also developed somewhat positive feelings for Michael. He might be pathetic but at the same time he is tragically human. A skewed picture of giving in to temptations and running from responsibilities.
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