Solar, by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is just about my favorite author (and Atonement is his best), although I didn’t love On Chesil Beach, a recent novel. His latest one, Solar, doesn’t disappoint.  The protagonist is a Nobel winning physicist and McEwan seems to have mastered much of the lingo if not the actual science. With his personal life a mess (5 divorces), and his professional life going nowhere, the physicist stumbles onto the global warming scene. And just as his personal life is fret with conflicting forces, desires he cannot control, and approaching calamities of various sorts, the Earth’s inhabitants don’t seem to be able to come to grips with the consequences of a diet of fossil fuels.  Many of the descriptions of his weaknesses and rationalizations are hilarious. But as ever, the greatest enjoyment of McEwan is his language – he must be the most masterful user of the English language among today’s authors. What a joy to read. A+.

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