Solar

Hmm, this book, Solar by Ian McEwan, was recommended by a friend and I did like it. But it was not among the other fiction books that I liked better. That being said, there is some very fun dark humour in there.

Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him, and whose fifth marriage is crumbling. However, an invitation to travel to New Mexico offers him a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

Hmm interesting note from a reader:

“I’m writing a paper arguing that Beard is himself meant to represent humanity’s approach to the environmental disaster: he lacks the ability to take responsibility for his own actions, acts in his own self-interest, and relishes in excess (both in food and women) to achieve his own pleasures at the detriment to himself and others.

I think McEwan’s trying to tell us that by ignoring/failing to take large-scale concerted efforts against Global Warming simply because environmental issues don’t seem to cause immediate catastrophe in our own lives we are effectively acting like the despicable Michael Beard.”