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Solar |  | Author: Ian McEwan
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 32.00
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 3453
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307399249
EAN: 9780307399243
ASIN: 0307399249
Publication Date: March 9, 2010
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Fame to Shame to Redemption: An Irreverent Satire on Celebrity, Self-Indulgence, and Science in the 21st Century July 13, 2010
Professor Donald Mitchell (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 97,000 Helpful Votes Globally)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;" -- 1 Corinthians 1:27 (NKJV)
I suspect that Solar could become a 21st century classic from the perspective of the 22nd century. We live in days of extreme worship for celebrities, secular learning, new technologies, and self-indulgence. Undoubtedly, the pendulum will eventually swing away from such things, as it always does. As a result, it's hard to see this story now as being a serious critique of society while living in the midst of such a careless world. I apologize for my own myopia in this sense.
I thought that the portrait of Michael Beard rang very true in terms of many people I've known who have earned fame and honor at a young age for some knowledge breakthrough. I personally would have found the book a lot funnier if it had been based in the nonsense that goes on around the Nobel Prize for economics rather than for physics.
Mr. McEwan did a fine job of revealing Beard's capability for self-deception by slowly revealing how much self-justification was involved in Beard's self-image.
The book's main problem is that it feels over the top, more like slapstick satire than rapier-wit satire. I expected something a little more subtle.
But the book made me laugh, caused me to squirm, led me to self-examine my own failings (of which there have been and continue to be many), and to appreciate more fundamentally why we need God's grace to overcome our sinful natures. That's a lot to gain from a satire.
Nice work, Mr. McEwan!
Solar Exposure July 7, 2010
Ian Gordon Malcomson (Smithers, Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
McEwan has written a very compelling story about a renowned Nobel laureate's attempt to develop a plan to find an effective alternative energy source to save the world from global warming. Michael Beard is one of those unique characters who is constantly reinventing himself in search of fame to go with his role as an eminent scientist. He possesses lots of brains, great survival instincts, but very little sense of purpose in his daily existence. Blocking his efforts to be ultimately successful in his field is the fact that his personal life is in shambles. There is no long-term commitment to a partner; he has low self-esteem; and he doesn't make friends easily. The term 'asperger' might easily come to mind. However, it is on these three facts alone that Beard wins more than a nod of sympathy from the reader. He is forever drifting in and out of relationships that never amount to more than one-night stands. The misadventures that constantly plague his chaotic lifestyle come from his lack of ability to understand where to go with his Nobel prize. Does it mean a life of speaking out in defense of popular scientific causes, or opening a research centre for the advance of some new advances in research for the good of humanity? Until he finds his calling in life, Beard lives an anxious and insecure life. When he finally gets his life on track with the promotion of photovoltaic cells, Beard encounters serious opposition from the scientific world who is either skeptical and downright jealous of his early success. Like Icarus of old, Beard ignores the counsels of those who are conspiring to thwart his freedom to be himself. The reader knows by the very fact that Beard, a big brain person, acts impulsively that his great plans to create artificial photosynthesis in the New Mexican desert will eventually get away on him. There are just too many people out there who either want to control or destroy his life for personal gain. His earlier triumphs of being able to maneuver himself out of some tight corners will eventually give way to ultimate failure and no place to hide. His past will finally catch up with him as he continues to redefine himself in the future. While this novel mentions a lot about global warming, it is for no other reason than to describe it as just another part of Beard's efforts to remake himself. It is McEwan's magnificent command of the English language that carries this story as far it goes. Right to the end, Beard and the other main characters stand up well under pressure from some very intensive and creative interacting. A good read by a very fine writer who knows how to capture the essence of the solitary individual looking for purpose outside himself.
Superb Writing May 29, 2010
Samantha (Ontario, Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ian McEwan is a great writer because each novel has its own distinctive style. In Solar, he delights with a wry depiction of Michael Beard, Nobel Prize winning physicist, a buffoon who stumbles into success and flails about trying to remain important. He is not an endearing protagonist, but I found his story, living on the edge of immorality, highly enjoyable. While not a comedy per se, there are a number of comical incidents that are laugh out loud funny. Although the novel centers around global warming and its politics, I did not find it dry. It was an engaging read.
A true master at work May 15, 2010
Andy Strote (Toronto)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
While some of the plot twists are perhaps a bit too audacious, this book is worth reading if only to marvel at McEwan's command of the English language. I often caught myself reading sentences a few times, just enjoying the writing. There are few writers that have that effect for me. Back to plot for a minute. McEwan does know how to get the story from A to B quite efficiently, sometimes within a sentence, where others would have taken paragraphs to make the leap. I've liked nearly everything McEwan has done and this just adds to the list.
 Shivering, baking, drowning, dying of thirst? March 22, 2010
Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
Ian McEwan is not just talking about the vagaries of contemporary weather patterns and how they affect human beings. With his new novel, SOLAR he intends to take us right into the middle of climate change politics. Really? Michael Beard, the rather unattractive and pathetic little rotund man in the centre of the novel, goes through all these physical sensations and a few more, figuratively speaking, when it comes to his obsessions with the pleasures of a man's life. In this long awaited and much rumoured about latest novel, McEwan has embarked into a new direction: exploring a serious and still controversial global issue in a less serious, somewhat satirical, way building on his great competencies as an author who exposes the frailties of human beings in the face of smaller or larger challenges.
Beard, while a surprise Physics Nobel laureate in his youth, has not has done much of any importance since and lives off his early reputation. "All the excitement and unpredictability was in the private life..." Beard muses at the beginning of the novel. Since then "two decades had passed since he last sat down in silence and solitude for hours on end, pencil and pad in hand, to so some thinking, to have an original hypothesis, play with it, pursue it, tease it to life... He had no new ideas".
We meet McEwan's anti-hero during three time periods: 2000, 2005 and 2009. In 2000 Michael Beard is fifty three and on his faltering fifth marriage, when he is completely devastated by the discovery that he is not the only one having affairs... While his sex life has fully recovered by 2005, the women are less stunningly beautiful, yet are able to satisfy his needs thanks to other qualities.
As a physicist he understands the basic science which forms the foundation for the politics and, back in 2000, he was "not wholly sceptical about climate change"; he "expected governments to meet and take action." Over the three time periods, seeing opportunities for himself, he has adjusted his public stand on the science with ease and sounds almost convincing for a while. A stroke of luck has handed him groundbreaking new research on photovoltaics on a plate and he eagerly builds on it to rekindle his reputation. Still, his personal life continues to take over with other priorities: food, women and the pleasures of life that are afforded a celebrity. The confluence of private and professional life will peak in 2009 when... well, the end is really predictable from the earlier build-up.
Despite the focus on one man's world - he is probably a symbol for human kind in its short-term pursuit of pleasure and greed in the face of major global environmental crises - McEwan touches on important climate change messages in the book. He knows the science and integrates it with ease. Conveyed either under the disguise of satire as in the hilarious description of the Arctic expedition that Beard participates in or in the form of parables such as a man standing in rain who dies of thirst, the authors' messages are drowned out by the overly lengthy and meticulous descriptions of Beard's increasing gluttony in all its forms.
While taking a shot at poking fun at the climate change evangelists fits well into the novel, for me, the satire didn't really come off easily and laughs were getting stuck in the throat. Despite gold nuggets of brilliance of writing in characterizing scenes and people, overall I found the language and narration less engaging than in his previous novels, especially in Atonement and Saturday. A primary reason for that is that Beard's world is seen only from a single perspective throughout the novel - his own eyes. Consequently, the novel remains too much just a story about one pathetic little man... There is no believable counter balance to Beard through any of the other characters, whether women or men. The women are nothing more than colourful decorations and objects of desire. And the climate change politics? It burns out under the strong solar rays. [Friederike Knabe]
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