Solar

By Ian McEwan

This is the second book I have read by this author.  The first book, Saturday, was highly acclaimed but I found I that I did not find it all that interesting and I could not relate to the  main character at all.

In this book, Solar, the main character is totally despicable.  He is a physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize early in his career and seems to be trying to live off that fame for the rest of his life.  He has married five tiimes, having numerous affairs during his marriages and he continues to be unfaithful to his latest two love interests, one (who is the mother of his child-- who he did not want her to have) and another woman in the U.S.

At the beginning of the story he is incensed when he finds out that his fifth wife is having an affair.  It is okay for him to have affairs but not for her... He is then shocked to find that she is also having an affair with one of his employees.   He discovers the man at his home, wearing his housecoat.  They have an argument and the young man trips on a rug and hits his head on the table and dies.  The physicist, Beard,
instead of reporting the accident, frames his wife's other lover (who has hurt her and threatened the other lover).  The lover is sent to jail for the murder.

Beard is a slob, and totally self-obsessed.  At one point in the story he is media fodder when he makes some comments that appear to be dismissive of women in science and then he seems to put his foot even more in his mouth as he tries to defend himself and then the media finds out about all his marriages and his affairs.  But soon another story takes over the news and his "sins" are forgotten.

When he finds out that his current lover is having an affair with another man he is again incensed.  She knows that he plays around and seems to be okay with that.

Beard takes some of the ideas from his dead employee and develops them into processes for using solar energy to create energy on earth.  He is on the verge of a major demonstration of the processes.  However as the book ends his lies and deceits are all coming tumbling down on him, his skin cancer has returned, he is in terrible shape healthwise, he is being sued for stealing his employees ideas and passing them of as his own, which means that all his funders will back out leaving him with millions in debt; he finds out someone has smashed all the solar array panels (likely the ex-con lover because he refused to give the man a job at his project) and his two girlfiriends and his 3 year old daughter are coming towards him in a restaurant.  He will not be able to ignore or blunder his way through all these difficulties this time!

I found the main character totally disgusting and of course wonder how he was able to be so appealing to so many women?  It was an okay story but a bit wordy.  I skipped through the last 70 pages just to get to the end.  I'm glad that the book ends with him having to face the consequences of his bad behaviour throughout his life.