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Solar by Ian McEwan (2010)
, 4 Oct 2014
I wanted to give
another opportunity to McEwan after reading Saturday, which I did not
enjoy and found over-praised. After all, McEwan is one of the most
prestigious writers in the English-speaking world, and I thought he
deserved it. Solar is the story of a Nobel-Prize middle-aged physicist who is having a complete life meltdown. He is having a marriage crisis with his fifth wife, and, a professional level, he has no new ideas or research going on, lives on the glories of the past, but is put in charge of a new Research Institute devoted to Renewable Energies that need of new ideas. The anti-hero of the book is so real that reminded me of some real researchers I have found in my own academic life in the past.
There
is no doubt that McEwan's English is good and precise, and that he
creates perfectly-delineated characters, as real as life itself, based
on a meticulous research work. So much so that the characters, what they
do, how they move, what they think, how they express themselves is
completely convincing and realistic. His fictional characters do exist,
also, because McEwan creates a realist fictional environment that
envelopes his characters, drawn with the same surgical precision.
Solar's
narrative, however, and as a result is slow and frustrating, as the
detail becomes a sea of tar you have to swim across to get to the point.
Really annoying. In other words, McEwan's plot, initially interesting
and original, becomes a succession of details. His characters are
static, over-drawn in a way, as if they were wearing too much clothing
and disappeared underneath it. On the contrary, the
plot is a peremptory and unrealistic combination of events that seem not
to make any sense, no matter the fact that this is, in a way, a comic book. If this was
not enough, the end of the book is irresolute, imperfect, as if McEwan had got lost
in his own microcosms and was not able to see the horizon and to put a
bright closure to the story.
Solar
has not clear chapters or sections, so reading the book becomes a pain,
as the continuity is too... continuous? It reminded me of Saramago, who
made an anti-art of this.
It took me ages to finish the book, just out of stubbornness more than out of pleasure, no matter the spark of some moments.
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