Solar

McEwan, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307739538 ISBN 13: 9780307739537

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2011

A best-selling work of wit from the Booker Prize-winning author, Solar brilliantly traces the arc of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist's ambitions and self-deception.

Dr. Michael Beard's 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 halfheartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. Meanwhile, Michael's fifth marriage is floundering due to his incessant womanizing. When his professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Michael to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster. But can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

Review:

"Totally gripping and entirely hilarious." --The Wall Street Journal

"Playful . . . glittering, gimlet-eyed. . . . Solar is balls-out, inventive, and brilliant." --Elle

"McEwan's funniest novel yet." --The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

"Excellent....Discreet and witty." -The New York Review of Books

"Wonderful....Underlying the novel's mordant comedy and its mounting suspense....is a genuine concern for the climate, the planet, the future of man." -Kansas City Star

"McEwan writes sentences of such witty elegance that the loss of John Updike seems a little easier to bear. . . .[He] comes to this [climate change] debate with considerabl[e] sophistication." -The Washington Post

"Precise and satisfying." -People

"Artistically ambitious [and] seriously entertaining. . . .In Solar [McEwan has] elegantly discovered a terrible truth: that comedy is the only possible way to deal with the searing specter stalking the planet." -The Wall Street Journal

"McEwan's best novel ever. . . .Fans of McEwan's previous work will find much to like." -The Daily Beast

"Vivacious and sprawling, a beautifully and compellingly written novel. . . .[His] achievement is the brilliant creation of a flawed, larger than life character who all but walks off the page to shake your hand." -The Times (London)

"The funniest book Ian McEwan has ever written. . . .McEwan is a nearly peerless wordsmith. . . .[and] crazy smart." -Entertainment Weekly

"[With] wonderful scenes, comic set pieces. . . .If you're human, it's hilarious." -Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Deft. . . .McEwan's background research is so seamlessly displayed that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technoloy might wonder if he's nicked their notes. But where Solar really succeeds--beyond the dark comedy--is the author's ability to reveal the nature of the climate conundrum in the very human life of his protagonist." -Time

"This may be his best work yet. . . .From start to finish, Ian McEwan has delivered his fastest-paced and most fastidiously researched novel." -The Vancouver Sun

"Wonderfully rendered. . . .Thoroughly engrossing and often quite funny." -The Seattle Times

"McEwan has shown himself to be a master of the smart, cynical tale. With Solar, though, the bar is raised. This may be the first climate-change comedy." -Montreal Gazette

"A pleasure to read. . . .McEwan mines [Beard's] rich and extravagant interior life for comic gold. McEwan proves himself comfortable not just with comedy and suspense but with science as well." -The Salt Lake Tribune

"Elegant and surprising. . . .[McEwan] reaches for a lighter, more comic mode than usual. . . .The overarching plot pulls off a clinching novelistic coup." -The Guardian (London)

"Provoking. . . .[With] carefully plotted twists. . . .It is a sign of McEwan's comic skill that he makes us sympathize with [the protagonist]. . . .Longtime readers of McEwan know how skilled he is at producing disasters from the ordinary, the way a magician pulls a bunny from a hat." -Slate

"Charlie Chaplinesque. . . .The comedy keeps coming....[Solar] tells the story of our polluted planet more vividly than any amount of well-explained physics." -Bloomberg News

Book Description:

An engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel about climate change