- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Knopf Canada; First Edition edition (Mar 9 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0307399249
- ISBN-13: 978-0307399243
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 17 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 590 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #54,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Globe and Mail Best Book
A New York Times Notable Book
An O: The Oprah Magazine Great Read
Winner – Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2010
“Deeply funny.”
—Toronto Star
"Scarcely a page fails to dazzle with some wittily caught perception about contemporary life. Blazing with imagination and intellectual energy, Solar is a stellar performance."
—Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
"McEwan at his best. Intelligent, funny, and full of insights."
—The Guardian
"A stunningly accomplished work, possibly his best yet."
—Financial Times
"Solar burns with wit and energy. It demonstrates why McEwan is among the language's most popular literary novelists."
—Winnipeg Free Press
"In Atonement or Enduring Love or Amsterdam or Saturday or pretty much any of his novels, Solar has many adept competitors for best of breed, and those competitors are beloved. But this may be his best work yet."
—The Star Phoenix
From the Trade Paperback edition.
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Globe and Mail Best Book
A New York Times Notable Book
An O: The Oprah Magazine Great Read
Winner – Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2010
“Deeply funny.”
—Toronto Star
"Scarcely a page fails to dazzle with some wittily caught perception about contemporary life. Blazing with imagination and intellectual energy, Solar is a stellar performance."
—Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
"McEwan at his best. Intelligent, funny, and full of insights."
—The Guardian
"A stunningly accomplished work, possibly his best yet."
—Financial Times
"Solar burns with wit and energy. It demonstrates why McEwan is among the language's most popular literary novelists."
—Winnipeg Free Press
"In Atonement or Enduring Love or Amsterdam or Saturday or pretty much any of his novels, Solar has many adept competitors for best of breed, and those competitors are beloved. But this may be his best work yet."
—The Star Phoenix
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Product Description
An engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel on climate change.
Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing — a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
When Beard's professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.
With a global scope, Solar is a comedy dealing directly with the crises of today. A story of one man's ambitions and self-deceptions, it is a startling and stylish new departure in the work of one of the world's great writers.
Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing — a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
When Beard's professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.
With a global scope, Solar is a comedy dealing directly with the crises of today. A story of one man's ambitions and self-deceptions, it is a startling and stylish new departure in the work of one of the world's great writers.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Writing,
By
This review is from: Solar (Hardcover)
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.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A true master at work,
By
This review is from: Solar (Hardcover)
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solar Exposure,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Solar (Hardcover)
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.
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