Solar by Ian McEwan

 

Dr. Michael Beard won a Nobel Prize when he was a young man.  These days, as a middle-aged one, he has skated on his reputation for years.  Headlining a conference here, giving a lecture there, sitting on corporate boards and currently, heading up a company interested in alternative energy.  He is on his fifth marriage and due to his constant cheating, is about to get his fifth divorce.

He knows it's about time to reinvent himself and when a young research scientist at the company gives Beard his research notes shortly before he dies, Beard sees the way.  He appropriates the young man's work as his own and creates a new kind of solar energy device.  It doesn't hurt that he is able to frame his wife's lover as the young man's murderer and get him out of the way as well.

Although Beard is a despicable man and most people don't like him, somehow he still manages to get good women interested in him.  He currently has two on the go.  One has been with him for years and he has a daughter with her.  The other is a woman he met in Texas where the new solar device is about to be tested and wants to be the sixth Mrs. Beard.  Will he ever get his comeuppance?

Ian McEwan is a British writer whose novels have been nominated six times for the Booker Prize and his novel Amsterdam won.  Another novel, Atonement, was adapted into a movie.  He has also won various other literary awards.  In this novel, he has created a villain who readers will long remember while also sending up the environmental crisis field of study a bit.  His works are quite readable and are memorable after reading.  This one wasn't his best but I enjoyed reading it quite a lot.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.