Ian McEwan’s novel Solar is a very funny send-up of the global warming cult in particular and government-dependent scientific research in general. Many Amazon reviewers seem to want to distance themselves from the main character, opportunist-physicist Michael Beard who, as he himself says, has enjoyed a free ride ever since he won a Nobel prize.
He is a cad, certainly, but a very amiable and human one and most of his wives and lovers share his selfish weaknesses—even his mother whose deathbed confession of 17 affairs in five years wins his (and our) admiration.
If anyone is in need of sympathy, it’s his four-year-old daughter, the only innocent in the tale. But she shares his hearty approach to life and one suspects she will turn out all right, enriched by memory of her father, the Expanding Universe, as her mother calls him in his final 65-pounds-overweight incarnation. I enjoyed the author’s novels Atonement and Enduring Love. But neither prepared me for this hilarious hoot whose only real sadness is saved for the final page. Thank you, Mr. McEwan.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Ian McEwan – certainly a different bird in the current British landscape of gutless wonders that call themselves writers. I shall bump Solar up in my waiting list…
Well, I hope you like it as much as I did.