Even though SOLAR is not the best of Ian McEwan, it's still fine and entertaining and thought provoking. I don't think it's up to the level of ON CHESIL BEACH, SATURDAY, AMSTERDAM, or ATONEMENT. But we must acknowledge that less than stellar McEwan is still heads and shoulders above most other of his contemporaries. There's as much science here as there is Spanish in the novels of McCarthy. There's more humor --of the very blackest--than in other of his works. His main character is drawn with a fine etcher's hand with no detail left out. Sometimes the unfolding of the plot is a bit wearisome, and there a few holes in the plot. Why was no one watching those solar panels? Still, there is much to admire in the work. Just as with SATURDAY he made us see the difficulties of 9/11, here he makes us take a vicious look at global warming from the inside and from the scoffers and from the transparent huckersters. SOLAR is the finest novel of this type since C.P. Snow. McEwan's conclusions about our state of scientific affairs remind one of Sut Lovingood's comment: "It's good to be a scoundrel in a new land."Get more detail about Solar CD.
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