Solar by Ian McEwan

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I’ve enjoyed past novels I’ve read by Ian McEwan. I particularly loved Atonement and Saturday. But I just couldn’t get through Solar. In it, McEwan indulges his worst instincts, with utterly despicable characters that he moves around on a chess board to teach readers the desired lesson. I could write more about it, but I found a review that perfectly summarized my thoughts. Here is Walter Kirn, writing in the New York Times:

“McEwan’s novel of Decline and Fall becomes a case study in Decline and Stall, lapsing into a display of his finesse as a spinner of silken sentences and composer of sonatalike paragraphs. The performance is an exquisite bore, with all the overchoreographed dullness of a touring ice ballet cast with off-season Olympic skaters.”

The review is actually pretty amusing overall. You can read it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/books/review/Kirn-t.html.