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Solar, by Ian McEwan
Solar traces three significant periods in the life of environmental scientist, Nobel prize winning physicist and professor, Michael Beard, as he flicks from self created life disaster to self created life disaster.
Apart from his pseudo-addiction to crisps, his biggest transgression in life is his womanising ways. This inevitably spins out of control and leads on to even more disaster for Beard as he goes to cover tracks from the aftermath of his philandering.
Everything the character does is completely self serving, without a trace of empathy or thought for others. He manoeuvres to position himself for his own gains, completely oblivious to the thoughts, feelings or lives of others. However, because the character learns nothing whatsoever about himself there's an empty feeling of disappointment at the end of the book.
While Ian McEwan's Solar is a lot of fun in parts to read, especially the trip to the arctic, it just doesn't do enough to win you over by the end. The style of the book is one of moral questions, with ironic indifference for answers, but the irony is not quite loaded as well as it could have been, and the culmination not quite so "savagely funny" as it perhaps should have been.
3.2/5
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