Solar

Michael Beard, Nobel Prize winner, womanizer, occasional buffoon, has-been opportunist, is far from a likeable character. As a matter-of-fact, one wonders how he can have so much success with women since he's not much to look at either. But this is the genius of McEwan: I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to him, how the sordid mess that he created for himself would finish. In some ways, Beard is very relatable: he does the stupid things that we all occasionally do, makes cowardly decisions, has flashes of brilliance and undeniable qualities. He is very human, and where he is probably much more callous than most of us, we can probably all see aspects of ourselves, good and bad.
The narrative is also very cleverly constructed show more where a few incidents, a couple critical decisions, all come to roost in the most unlikely of places, a small town in New Mexico. There is definitely poetry in those last desert scenes where the oppressive heat becomes unbearable.
Overall, although it's a dense book, I really enjoyed this read with passages that had me laughing out loud and others shaking my head. The denouement is perfect as both a logical ending and a ruthless judgment of Beard who may be foolish but not a fool. show less

Ian McEwan does it again! Solar is a hilarious, intellectual romp for our times. It's a satire that aims its shots in many directions: at the narrow worlds of academia and scientific research; at the New Age/hug-a-tree/love-can-save-the-world philosophy; at the idealism of the young and the cynicism of their elders; at the wheeling and dealing behind corporate American enterprise; at the inexplicable nature of love and its counterpart, lust.

Michael Beard, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, has been sitting on his laurels for years, working half-heartedly for a British energy center that sees wind energy as the future, spending more time mocking the "ponytails" (the young post-grad physicists who work under him) than developing new show more theories or resources. In his spare time, Beard has lumbered his way through five marriages and numerous affairs, and his penchant for alcohol, beef, pancakes, and crisps have added more weight to his physical profile than his professional one.

But then things start to happen--call them accidents or fate or coincidences, or just plain old opportunities. And Michael Beard is there to pick up the pieces and use them to his best advantage.

A few of the reviews already posted tell, I think, way too much and spoil the surprises to come for future readers. I'll only say that I knew how dark McEwan could be, but I had no idea that he could be quite so funny. Several of the scenes, including the one on the Paddington train alluded to by others, had me actually laughing out loud.

I listened to the audiobook and was delighted to find an interview of McEwan by his editor at the end. In it, he discussed his research process (which included not only reading about global warming and renewable energy but an extended stay in New Mexico and an arctic trip with a group of artists and scientists) and the fact that he has already been approached by a number of physicists who claim they know upon whom he based the character of Beard (he claims it was his own creation, but that it's probably a "good thing" there are so many likely Beards out there rather than just one).

Overall, Solar is a smart, funny, and perceptive novel about our times, and I highly recommend it. Don't expect it to be another Atonement or On Chesil Beach; McEwan is attempting something entirely different here, and you will have to be willing to take it on its own terms. show less

I know that I will be vilified for my review of this book… Those readers, like me, that have read all or most of Ian McEwan’s books probably have high expectation for his newest work. As simply and as respectfully as I can, I have to say that I don’t think “Solar” is worthy of this talented author.

The plotline is disconcerting…beginning with the introduction of the main character, Michael Beard. He is an incredibly unlikable character…but not SO much so that the reader could love to hate him. He doesn’t have a strong enough personality for that. He’s a gluttonous, unfaithful, shallow slob of a man that somehow won a Nobel Prize once upon a time. (And the longer this book goes on, the harder that is to believe.) He is a show more man that usually cares very little for other people, (“He was suffused with the pleasant illusion of liking people,”) but he finds himself realizing that he’s obsessed with his fifth wife, who, upon finding out about Michael’s rampant infidelity, announces that she is having an affair as well. The shoe being on the other foot for once…Michael can’t stop thinking about her and how much her affair bothers him.

AND THEN…on page 62 – this book completely jumped the shark for me. I won’t go into details (because there are more than enough of them in the book) – but an incident happens that had me rolling my eyes in irritation and disbelief. Michael Beard gives a new definition to the word cuckold, let’s just go with that.

Beard is a character that is all too believable but who just doesn’t seem to have a point.
The strongest feelings he seems to have are about food and his slightly nauseating relationship with it.

“He was not at that moment truly hungry, but he was, in his own term, pre-hungry. That is, he could appreciate how pleasurable it might be, in less than an hour, to lift a few of those items onto a plate and contemplate the river while he ate. And just as easily, he could anticipate the regret he would feel if the dishes were removed too soon, when the afternoon tea break came to an end, which it must do when his talk began. Safer to eat a few now.”

The reader is given no way to reconcile the storyline about his personal life before the story switched gears to start focusing on the global problem of climate change. Nothing in Beard’s life ever gets reconciled…he just drifts along until something happens to either cause a different problem or the problem is not longer relevant. “Beard was generally adept at avoiding inconvenient or troubling thoughts…”

I kept trying to decide if Beard is supposed to represent the deniers of climate change, or those who refused to take action on the problem or think about the future. Maybe? But then his work trying to solve that problem doesn’t seem to fit. (True, his work on the subject doesn’t come from any concern of his own, and true to form, he sort of stumbles into the research…)

I just can’t figure out what the message of this book is supposed to be. There’s just nothing strong enough in this book to latch on to. (Unless you count Michael’s passion for salt and vinegar crisps.)

Again, I know that this review will be met with angry protest from Ian McEwan fans…but as one myself, I was just very disappointed by this offering from such a talented writer. show less

Being a Nobel prize winner means you've done something amazing. Nobody else before you did that. Today many others, most likely, are building on what you achieved. The world is likely in your debt for what you did. All this implies we are prone to think very positively of a Nobel laureate. Once you read this book, you will never think that way again.

The central character of this book, Michael Beard, has won a Nobel prize. But at this point he's clearly coasting on his laurels. He's on his fifth marriage. Rather than doing research or teaching, he's into getting funding for a Center he heads. The Center has a positive goal, reducing climate change by developing renewal energy. They are creating rooftop wind generators which he knows show more will never be workable. He's had countless affairs even though he's married beautiful women who adored him. He pays little attention to his assistants who desperately seek his approval. He seeks liquor whenever anything becomes troublesome. He's narcissistic, self-absorbed, and lacks empathy. In short, he's a cad. Yes, he's a Nobel laureate, are we supposed to overlook everything else?

It even gets darker. His beautiful young wife is no longer talking to him. She's been pushed over the edge. She's having a very public affair with someone who had worked on their house. Beard is beside himself. Returning home from a trip unexpectedly, he discovers she's also having an affair with the brightest assistant in his Center. The assistant had been trying to get Beard to abandon the rooftop wind generators and focus on solar, which is closer to what Beard's Nobel prize was based on. The assistant slips, hits his head and dies. Beard sees an opportunity He gets the workman's hammer from a closet, dips it in the assistant's blood and plants it as incriminating evidence. Workman goes to jail. Beard solves two problems at once. Our opinion of Beard plummets even if we had been sympathetic so far.

It gets worse. Beard reads what the assistant had wanted to show him. He realizes the assistant has created designs that will make solar viable as a renewable energy source and solve the climate change problem. Beard appropriates the designs as his own, and for the next several years he rides this wave based on "his" designs. He has an amazing ability to escape the consequences of what he's done. Still having affairs, still drinking, still getting older. Will his luck ever run out? You'll have to read the book to find out. show less

Solar
by Ian McEwan
narrated by Roger Allam
(P) 2010, Recorded Books
11 hours, 50 minutes
(includes interview between the author and his editor)

This isn’t so much a review as it is a witness testimony, not like on a court stand, but more like what you might see and hear at a religious revival! I admit that, in the past , I have committed the literary sin of not “getting” Ian McEwan. I read On Chesil Beach and Saturday with due diligence and lit-fic sobriety. In doing so, I was underwhelmed by the prose and declared McEwan “overrated” in rendering the psychological thriller to nothing more than a Tale of Anxiety (and at that, of a white older male variety!)

Then, I saw the light. Someone here on LT (and I'm sorry I cannot remember show more who!) mentioned that they had heard Ian McEwan read an excerpt from On Chesil Beach out loud with comic flair! And that the audience was not only enthralled, but laughing along with him! Hmmm, perhaps if I hadn’t dismissed my own sense of humour and replaced it with self-righteous literary pretensions, I might have enjoyed On Chesil Beach, and come to think of it, Saturday more than I had. With that in mind, I picked up Solar which I had heard was supposed to be pretty funny. Admittedly, I had also heard that this was not McEwan’s best and, as a validation of that opinion, it was not nominated for a ManBooker award. So it kind of figures, considering the high rate of ironic incidences in my life, that the McEwan that no one seems to like is the one that I absolutely adore!

The story features Michael Beard, a Nobel laureate who, when we meet him in his early fifties, is wallowing around in the collapse of his fifth marriage, a deteriorating body, and work in physics that is neither intellectually stimulating nor rewarding. The whole of Solar takes place over the course of about ten years (1999-2009) in which we watch Michael Beard muck his way around and through relationships, work and his health, always holding onto the promise of the next chapter in his life. It would be very easy to attach a lot of symbolic import to various artifices in the novel; but after listening to the interview of the author with his editor, you realize that, in doing so, you would be projecting too much into the novel. It is what it is and; what it is is a very honest portrayal of a man with all the absurdist elements that that may imply. Perhaps those who don’t like this novel don’t want to acknowledge that Michael Beard is very much an Everyman and, by default themselves; but I found common cause with the character for being flawed. Rather than finding Michael Beard an unlikable character, I was morbidly fascinated with his ability to have gotten as far as he had. I often found myself cheering for Michael even while admitting that he brought on most of his problems himself.

Roger Allam is a British narrator who delivered Ian McEwan’s novel flawlessly. The production uses British pronunciations, which may sound awkward to American ears, but it does not interfere with the understanding or enjoyment of the story. Allam reads the book “straight,” without comic intonations and also without dropping into the deadly neutral zone :-)

I loved Solar and I can’t wait to read McEwan’s next novel! show less

A novel about the train wreckishly messy personal and professional life of Michael Beard, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist currently working on renewable energy and the struggle to halt global warming. Beard is easily the most unlikeable protagonist I've encountered in ages... and not in a fascinating-but-flawed or fun character-you-love-to-hate kind of way, either. He's a rotten husband, a piss-poor excuse for a human being and, despite the accomplishments of his youth, kind of a crappy scientist, to boot. He's not the sort of person whose company I'd enjoy spending time at all in, never mind spending an entire novel's worth of time in his head, and every time I started to feel any sympathy for him, he'd prove to me all over again just show more what a colossal schmuck he was. And yet, somehow, McEwan kept me turning pages, interested to see more of this man's story. I find this quite impressive.

I think it helps a great deal that Beard, in all his faults, feels very much like a real person. There was a danger here that he might have come across as a simplistic stereotype: the cold, detached, egotistical scientist with no capacity for human feeling. But even if that description fits him well enough, he doesn't feel like a stereotype. He's far too three-dimensional a character for that. And McEwan, far from displaying the hostility or ignorance towards science that usually goes with that particular stereotype, appears to have an amazingly good grasp of the philosophy of science and of how real physicists think. He also displays an excellent understanding of human psychology, and of the ways in which even those who value and strive for objectivity are subject to denial, irrationality, and the ability to remember only what we want to remember and believe what we wish to believe. (The relevance of this to global warming, pleasingly, is left as an exercise for the reader.) show less

Ah, McEwan. I just love this writer. Every book is so different that you start them in perfect anticipation of what he'll throw at you this time.

Solar was a great read, possibly one of the funniest of McEwan's that I've read so far. The protagonist is scientist Professor Beard, Nobel Prize Winner, womaniser, egotist and general all round self-indulgent pig. He's a great character - super smart and super dumb in equal measures, a loathsome sloth of a man who rides his professional and personal life largely on the back of his Nobel win. Oftentimes he reminded me of an academic version of John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom, another brilliantly flawed character who is one of my all-time favourites.

I always find it very difficult to review a show more McEwan book as I never want to give too much of the plot away. It's suffice to say that in Solar Beard's professional and personal lives collide in some very unexpected ways which are in turn toe-curlingly embarrassing, laugh out loud funny and page turningly brilliant. A great mix of comedy and tension, and thoroughly enjoyable read. show less