It’s interesting that a writer can choose such an unpleasant protagonist and yet have his reader so compellingly drawn into the narrative of this character’s life.
Solar is about a physicist, Michael Beard, a brilliant, womanising, cheating liar who nevertheless has a certain smarmy and superficial charm about him that initially draws people in.
The story charts the course of more than a twenty years, as he navigates his relationships with wives and lovers while developing new solar power technologies.
Like most of McEwan’s books, Solar is uncomfortable, squirmy reading. He is an acute observer of the everyday details of life and he uses them to build an excruciating picture of this awful man and his behaviour.
I think McEwan is a genius. He focuses on moments in people’s lives that are at the least uncomfortable and often very threatening – obsession, home invasion, suicide, lies and betrayals – and puts them under a sort of literary microscope using characters we all recognise from our own lives. I loved Solar.
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