Ian McEwan

Listened to the audiobook, read by the author himself (love his soft voice and English accent). I'd been wondering how one would write an entire novella about consummating a marriage, and now I know: You have to be Ian McEwan. He makes everything important and interesting; his language and insights are almost always surprising. The audiobook includes an interview with McEwan at its end, where he talks about what he left out of the book. This in itself is fascinating, to hear his process and why he didn't include certain details. Great stuff.

Highly recommended for lovers of literary fiction.… (more)

I was so excited to see a new novel from one of my favorite authors! I have not read everything by Ian McEwan, but I have loved everything I have read. While I did enjoy Solar, it was not my favorite, however.

Solar tells the story of Michael Beard, a fat, self-absorbed, womanizing, Nobel laureate whose glory days are long in the past and who sits proudly and lazily on his past achievements. He has done nothing of consequence (professionally speaking) in years, and yet is still revered and honored in the scientific community. And he is just fine with that. His love life is a disaster; he has married and divorced 5 times by the end of the book. Beard is a complete and total arse, whose life and actions were not particularly interesting (and often actually quite off-putting), and yet McEwan still finds a way to make him endearing and laughable. Quite a feat, if you ask me. Like so many of the people who drift in and out of Beard's life, I felt sorry for him, and the pity allowed him to continue to get away with "murder," so to speak.

It took me over a month to finish Solar, as I didn't find it to be particularly compelling; I didn't really care about Michael Beard or what (probably deserved) consequences fell upon him. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it; I really did, when I was reading. I just mean to say that for me, it was not the kind of book I couldn't wait to get back to when I wasn't reading. I don't really have anything negative to say about it, though. McEwan's writing is wonderful, his descriptions lively and often hilarious, and the characters are realistic. It was an enjoyable story, even comical at times, different from other works of his that I have read. It was just not a story that I loved. Overall, I am glad I read it, and I would certainly recommend it for any McEwan fans.… (more)