I really enjoyed Solar. I guess I'm not giving it 5 stars because it isn't my favourite Ian McEwan book. It's funny and some of the reflections about global projects were illuminating (and unfortunately rang true).
I am reneging here on a verbal star assignation for this book. About half way through there is a tale in which Beard eats a bag of chips on a train from Heathrow to Paddington. At the end of this story, I set the book down and told my husband, no matter what, this book just got a 5 star rating. I...
The novel is completed. He has posted the bulky typescript to his publisher - old-fashioned, he prefers this unnecessary gesture to the casual economy of e-mailing a PDF - and now he is free of the tormented inner voice telling him to reword, rejig, rewrite, rethink. He knows it is not as good as hi...
Michael Beard, an overweight and aging physicist who won the Nobel prize twenty years ago and hasn't stopped eating, drinking or cheating on all of his five wives since. This changes when a freak accident leaves him in possession of a file full of brilliant ideas from a young post-grad, and claimin...
Solar is the story of scientist who I found totally unlikeable. He has been married five times and has had innumerable affairs. In the beginning of the book, he is living off of the fact he has won a Nobel prize many years before. He has no purpose or focus. Then he is present when a colleague di...
Funny at parts, somewhat confusing at others that called for multiple re-reads. My first McEwan book, it was not terribly convincing as a testament to the purported greatness of the author's writing, though that may or may not have been due to my occasional absent-mindedness, and the ending was some...
It starts promising,the Arctic episode is one of the best pieces of humour I've read this year, but then the Physics jibberjabber begins and I'm confused and totally not interested. However, McEwan is pretty skilful, just when you think you can't take any more Physics, he switches to Michael's far m...
I had wanted to read Solar since its release last year, having really enjoyed Atonement. When I finally picked up a copy earlier this month I began it with some trepidation, having read some fairly mixed reviews online. However, despite the creation of one of the most unlikeable and unsympathetic pr...
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