Solar - Book Review

The essence of energy, even presumable renewability, can be lost in the diatribes of man. The main conceit of a novel like "Solar" [Ian McEwan/Nan A. Talese/304 pgs] is that man is fallible throughout all his courses through the perception of how he lives his life. This is not unlike the dissolution of hope in McEwan's previous and well-known novel "Atonement". Now while the protagonist of this book ("Solar") is a slowly and perceptively obstrusive scientist who for all matters of course is self absorbed in his own achievements, it is a story ultimately about how the most active and inventive of people can be inherently lazy simply by their state of mind. Beard, the main character, is a man who gluttonously and eroneously lives his life as if there is no repercussion for his flagrant and somewhat nihilistic actions. Whether this structures form to the accidental death of an underling who was sleeping with the only woman Beard really loved or if a woman that loves him so much that their actual lives at the end of the book begin to interact in a pedantic sort of manner is besides the point. The one thing however that becomes clear is that no matter what the circumstances, living is an affair of the heart no matter how intellectual one tries to be. The solar science of the title is just a mechanical structure which for all points is original but also quite underwhelming in terms of a framing pursuit. The book moves at its own pace continuing in a sort of medium ground where actions, as a whole, simply function as a progression from reception to reception. Certain moments like the call on a dedicated line from his 3 year old daughter or a regression of the sheer act of deceit in regards to the pregnancy of his current wife shows the emptiness of this man's vision but not one to which the reader feels empathy for. Ultimately "Solar" is a tale of warning that is undeniably shadowed in a character who sowed his own seeds of destruction. Out of 5, I give it a 2.