Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 63
 Did anyone laugh? July 26, 2010
Bob Ventos (UK)
There are a couple of worries about opening a new Ian McEwan novel for me. First, I've generally read so much _about_ it before starting it that I wonder whether my opinions are my own. Second, I get that bolshy 'OK, impress me then' feeling, because I was desperately impressed, long ago, by 'First Love, Last Rites' and 'The Cement Garden'. Whether McEwan, like his main character in this novel, has his best work behind him, is an arguable point.
In three sections dated 2000, 2005 and 2009, in long paragraphs of self-obsession, semi-integrated research and travel-and-lecturing, we follow pathologically selfish Professor Michael Beard as he breaks up with his fifth wife, fronts a climate research centre, goes to Spitzbergen, frames his wife's lover for murder, steals a colleague's research, gives lectures, eats and drinks to excess, gets vilified in the press, opens a solar-cell centre in Arizona, and finally has his various crimes and misdemeanours catch up with him.
Whether you find this comic or not (our reading group was divided) seems to depend on how you view the main character. I found him so much the stock hapless 'Stars and Bars' Englishman-abroad that the jokes seemed like I'd read them many times before. And the antilogy that someone can be individually self-centred but also do good in a larger sense was too hackneyed for my taste. Similarly, the shambolic boot-locker as a metaphor for world-wide foul-up felt too simplistic. I did like it that Beard's a scientist and that the novel at least tries to look at global political and technological themes that a lot of contemporary novels shy away from. I'd not come across the idea of artificial photosynthesis before, and the domestic roof-windmills were interesting. Is Beard having a heart-attack at the end? I presumed so, unless Ian McEwan is being uncharacteristically sentimental? In short, I was impressed at times, but also exasperated. Has anyone yet written a really good climate-change novel?
 I found nothing at all to like about this book. July 25, 2010
stanis (England)
I suspect I put in far more effort reading this book than McEwan did in writing it.
Other reviews have referred to satire and humour. I found none. There are moments of high farce that may appeal to some readers, but to me they were low points in an already poor narrative. Without a single likeable character it is difficult to care how the story plays out. Indeed I debated with myself whether or not to read the last twenty pages. In the end I decided I would - I can't tell you if it was the right decision or not - I don't hate this book any more or less as a result.
Clearly opinions are very divided on this book and some people genuinely loved it - I just don't understand why.
Sparks of joy in a dark sky July 23, 2010
Mrs. Katharine Kirby (HELSTON, Cornwall United Kingdom)
Well it's either Ian McEwan being a less than clear writer or me being dense and I humbly suppose it is the latter, but at least one third of this book went way over my head. However as it all sped by through the clouds a few sunbeams penetrated through and landed on me. Solar energy `lite' as explained and exploited by the waddling Bad Boy Beard became slightly more understandable as I read on. Luckily someone at a party told me that 'Solar' is meant to be a comedy just as I'd begun reading it which helped me get a grip.
I actually liked Beard and kept with the book mostly for his sheer effrontery, greed, optimism and naughtiness. I took to his daughter Catriona and I admired his wives. I enjoyed being part of his thought processes and felt an understanding sympathy with his hopeless behaviour. The surprise finding of his wife's dead lover and Beard's arrangement of the situation all made a sort of mad sense.
Ian McEwan never writes the same book twice and so you can't account for what he will come up with next. I will stick with him through thick and thin because of his hugely satisfactory earlier works but with the pickings becoming ever more slender for me, I just have to appreciate what he writes that I can `get'. This time it was the Physics Laureate Professor Michael Beard, the Chief, who for me had a certain kind of ghastly charm!
Dreadful Rubbish July 22, 2010
W. J. Hewlett (Belgium)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was looking forward to reading this book. Such a strong title held great promise. Main character Beard a Nobel Prize winner. Should reveal some great insights into climate change, sustainability and alternative energy sources with a particular focus on solar energy all wrapped up in a good story. I couldn't have been more wrong.
I hated the main character from the outset and had no sympathy for him whatsoever throughout the book. In fact, if he had died on that snowmobile it would not have been too soon in my opinion. Beard is a short fat cowardly womanising idiot - I read the book in order to further explore how not to write a novel and to see if there actually was any good technology or beneficial developments before the end. There were not.
Don't waste your time with this book.
 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 96,000 Helpful Votes Globally)
"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!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 63
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