Solar – Ian McEwan

Michael Beard, physicist, a Nobel Prize winner twenty years ago for his ‘Beard Einstein Conflation’, has carved himself a comfortable career lending (more accurately hiring) his name and reputation to academic institutions and research projects in the UK and abroad.

As the book opens in 2000 his latest sinecure is Head of the National Renewable Energy Centre where he turns up a couple of times a week to see and be seen by the researchers. A throwaway line of his has sent them down a blind alley of domestic wind turbine development, but one researcher, Tom Aldous, has a better idea – improving solar – which he badgers Beard to take a look at (in vain).

Beard has other priorities. A serial womaniser on his fifth marriage he finds himself for the first time on the receiving end of infidelity. When he returns home from an incident packed sojourn in the Arctic Circle, events conspire to produce a farcical situation with a potentially serious outcome, but he uses his sharp wits to turn it into an opportunity to move on in both his personal and professional life.

The book fast-forwards to 2005 to get an update on both these. He’s left the Centre under a bit of a cloud but is working with commercial partners making great strides in solar power. Romantically he is in a new relationship which he thinks is nearing its sell by date until Melissa drops a bombshell.

Another five year jump to 2010 and, on the eve of the public launch of the new technology in the heart of New Mexico, some of Beard’s chickens hatched in 2000 and 2005 are coming home to roost. Can his nimble footwork carry the day or will he crash and burn?

The use of three snapshot periods enables McEwan to tell the story while lingering over some well-constructed comic set pieces. Beard – clever but a bit pompous, overweight, aging but still a charismatic presence – is a fine butt for the humour.

The author’s prose is a precise and flowing as ever, the scientific context is handled lightly and confidently (who knows how plausibly), and the unfamiliar humour sits comfortably within, producing an entertaining and enjoyable read.