Ian McEwan - Solar

The New York Times“Mr. McEwan’s funniest novel yet...” Like “Amsterdam,” this latest book shows off his gifts as a satirist, but while it gets off to a rollicking start, its plot machinery soon starts to run out of gas, sputtering and stalling as it makes its way from one comic set piece to another..

Publishers Weekly“A novel broken up by fast-forwards...” The scientific material is absorbing, but the interpersonal portions are much less so—troublesome, since McEwan seems to prefer the latter—making for an inconsistent novel that one finishes feeling unpleasantly glacial...

Economist“A novel to chuckle over, and chuck away...” There are some superbly crafted scenes—Beard putting on his snowsuit on his way to the North Pole, Beard stealing a packet of crisps—all of which will please those who believe Mr McEwan is best at writing short fiction...

Financial Times“A stunningly accomplished work...” At an age when most writers begin to lose their spark, McEwan seems to be endlessly looking for new challenges. The task he has set himself in Solar appears to be the most ambitious one yet...

The Independent“Farce, perhaps thankfully, may not be his métier...” Forgive the pun, but Solar is purely light entertainment – no bad thing in itself but lacking the scope and tenacity that one might expect from McEwan. Farce, perhaps thankfully, may not be his métier...

The Telegraph“Comedy mixed with menace...” The denouement of Solar in sunny New Mexico is not predictable but is predictably bleak, and my only reservation about the novel is that the end is a bit of a jolt, the brakes are applied rather forcefully...

The Scotsman“Solar could as easily have been called Solo...” Sometimes McEwan seems to be trying to channel the young McEwan, that master of the cold grotesque. The fundamental problem – if this is a novel about climate change – is that Beard is too amoral, too flabbily flawed to carry the theme...

The Times“A comedy every bit as brilliant as its title might suggest...” Scarcely a page fails to dazzle with some wittily caught perception about contemporary life. Blazing with imaginative and intellectual energy, Solar is a stellar performance...

Guardian“Lightness, however, comes less easily to McEwan...” McEwan's solution is both elegant and surprising: instead of applying doom and gloom, he reaches for a lighter, more comic mode than usual. The overarching plot pulls off a clinching novelistic coup, using comedy to sneak in grimmer matters...

The New Yorker“Not yet reviewed”