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Book Reviews of Solar

Solar
Solar
Author: Ian McEwan
ISBN-13: 9780385533416
ISBN-10: 0385533411
Publication Date: 3/30/2010
Pages: 304
Rating:
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
 11

3.3 stars, based on 11 ratings
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

4 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

reviewed Solar on + 66 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This story is current and topical. McEwan's description of characters is spot on. The main character, Michael Beard is totally unsympathetic but his motivations are understandable. A good profile of a scientist and his science and how it informs his personal relationships. He is intensly human and believable with all of his failings. As long as human beings are involved, saving the world will not be easy.
reviewed Solar on + 289 more book reviews
Solar is another quintessential McEwan offering of a morally questionable character cast in an elegant but harsh light. This time the protagonist is Michael Beard, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who lets himself go to seed in numerous ways. When we meet him, Beard, coasting on his prize from Stockholm, has not done any serious scientific work for years and his fifth marriage is starting to fail as he is cuckolded by a younger wife whom he still desires. Set in three acts each about five years apart, Beard begins to work on artificial photosynthesis as a clean energy source, allowing Beard to sustain illusions of grandeur and McEwan to comment on climate change and human nature. McEwan's prose is elegant, understated, and biting as always, and he brings the story to a good climax. However, to stick with Beard's indulgences and somewhat repulsive nature for ~300 pages might not be everyone's cup of tea.
mywoodybird avatar reviewed Solar on + 28 more book reviews
An average book not as polished as Saturday or Atonement. It deals with climate change, global warming and artifical photysynthesis. Michael Beard the prize winning physicist, also a multiple marriage person and philanderer, steals Tom Aldous patent for climate change, causes Tom Aldous's death inadvertently and blames his ex-wife's lover for it.
ReneeGK avatar reviewed Solar on + 14 more book reviews
Wow. Not his easiest, not his quickest, but the satire is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Mostly it's a long, nasty journey with another McEwen-esque non-hero. So let's say, not exactly fun, but worth it at the end.