| Solar |  | Author: Ian McEwan
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £6.96
as of 10/9/2010 03:38 MDT details
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Seller: sun-shine
Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 844
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0224090496
EAN: 9780224090490
ASIN: 0224090496
Publication Date: March 18, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. A compulsive womaniser, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 74
 Solar - A Stellar Disappointment September 8, 2010
Col.de.Bil
I have not previously left a review on Amazon, but felt compelled to do so after reading "Solar" for a book club that I have just joined. Not sure I would have bothered to finish it except for the club and in the vain hope that at the end all would be justified. It wasn't. I see nothing to recommend Ian McEwan's latest work. I spent most of the time asking myself "What is the point of this book?" In the end I decided it was a vehicle to: (i) introduce young readers to an old, apocryphal story most will already have heard; (ii) include one amusing episode, spread out over many paragraphs, that will force most men into a sharp intake of breath; and (iii) make money. Well done that man. PS. In case of any doubt, this book has nothing to do with Solar Power, and the only thing "Green" about it was yours truly in paying for the hardback version.
 Disappointing September 5, 2010
N. Corble (Bucks, UK)
Oh dear - I have liked McEwan in the past but he is in serious danger of losing his way. Like it's protagonist, this book is flabby and ultimately pointless. Don't get me wrong, I read it in two days and it's very readable, but what a missed opportunity. The links between greed and man's use of energy are clumsy and obvious and the ending is just blah - come on Ian, you can do better than this ... surely?
 Exact match for a rainy holiday ... September 4, 2010
Koyaanisqatsi (Leinfelden-Echterdingen)
I bought this book ~ unaware of McEwan's reputation ~ as a nice addendum to my holiday literature stock ~ just in case the wheather wouldn't be so sunny over there, as it wasn't, unfortunately.
So I delved into the book, and was immediately fascinated by McEwan's typical british humor as well as impressed by his apparently in-depth research about physics and physicists, which gives the book something very authentic and realistic.
Of course, the book is not about physics as such, but it prompted me to look after some of the references e.g. at the end of the book where a fictitious Nobel Prize speech has been attached ~ and was pleased and surprised to find some interesting papers about recent post-string-theory developments in theoretical physics, in particular the famous E8 exceptional Lie group ~ fascinating indeed (if you are interested in it, and not afraid of mathematics, look for the work of A. Garrett Lisi!).
As many reviewers before me have said enough about the contents of the book, let me just give my personal feedback by summarizing, that I largely agree with those who have praised the book and largely disagree with those who have criticized it.
Can do better September 1, 2010
Paul B (UK)
Generally I enjoyed the book, even the science and yes I found it very amusing at times (good joke about a particle physicist who is caught in bed with another woman by his wife - he exclaims "darling, I can explain everything!" - come on, that's funny). For me the book draws on the farcical comedy of Tom Sharpe novels (who does farcical comedy much better) and echoes Faulkes' Engleby (a much better book) in the examination of an amoral, ultimately grotesque character. Beautifully written, tight prose as we would expect.
 Intriguingly awful September 1, 2010
SMM
What a strange book? Paragraphs of funny, well-written black humour at its best if taken out of context, BUT structurally the book was a total mess. IMcE had to keep in-filling improbable back story to justify going forward and, crumbs, talk about structural rabbits out of hats at the end in Tarpin's revelations!
Had the material of a very serious novel almost mini-Dickensian in scale and in terms of grotesque caricatures. Issues of climate change etc, the flawed Nobel Prize winner traducing his integrity in a terribly sad, sort of Falstaffian way but a book which turned into just another whodunnit made indigestible with artfully baffling science that McEwan will know very few of his readers would get and all underpinned by a way OTT fate motif stalking ever closer as Michael Beard's serial relationships get sillier and sillier by the page. It really is as if McEwan was daring the publisher / his audience to tell him it's total tripe by plotting that got ever closer to farce piled on farce.
And very daring to have a central character as deeply, physically repellent and morally unpleasant as Michael Beard. Not fun enough to be picaresque, over-eating in a spectacularly American way as his efforts to be both epic green climate changer, epic food and drink consumer - Gargantua for our time - and epic con man, while not being clever enough to be a machiavellian genius, and surrounded by figures out of a modern panto. Loved Toby Hammer.
I thought it was intriguingly awful.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 74
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