'Solar' by Ian McEwan - Book Review

Ian McEwan is the best selling and critically acclaimed author of novels including Saturday and Atonement. His latest novel, Solar, is a riveting and funny story, completely unusual and as good as anything he has ever written.

Michael Beard is the protagonist of Ian McEwan's latest novel, Solar. A late-middle-aged scientist with a Nobel Prize under his belt who coasts on his professional fame and is on his fifth marriage when the story begins, Michael isn't particularly likeable for most of Solar. McEwan recounts Michael's life in the past decade, from the personal to the professional to the political, and how all intertwine. The nominal head of a government research center in London, he is bored by work and seems surprised to find himself feeling desperate love for his fifth wife once he realizes she is having an affair -- in response to his numerous affairs.

Solar is interested in the best and worst of Michael, in the politics and business of science and academia. That sounds dry, though, and Solar is anything but. McEwan is funny and slapstick at time, as Beard alternates between bumbling fool and less bumbling Nobel Prize-winner. We're not too far into 2010, but McEwan's newest novel will undoubtedly be one of the year's best.