McEwan as few other authors manage to excite the reader to the fates of characters at least questionable, "heroes" that attract in proportion to the disgust they inspire. This is the case of Michael Beard: short, fat, incredible seducer, faithless husband and a licensed serial on the fifth marriage, just over half a century is now a listless and despotic bureaucrat when the genius of science, although in his youth earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics, has left him. From Einstein's successor to living almanac of the seven deadly sins (with some preference for throat and lust): the parable of existential Beard seems to lead inexorably towards the melancholic contemplation of his own decadence. At least until the day when he is entrusted with the national center for renewable energy: its subject is not slow to put the spotlight on a young Tom Aldous, as bright as naive (at least in the eyes of cynical Beard) in its aspiration to " save the world. " Yet the draft Tom is not as unsubstantiated if the air as he speaks its discovery is able to resolve once and for all the energy problems of the planet. The meeting between the young researcher and scientist will mature unexpected developments: a plot that, far from being an end in itself, is an opportunity for a collective moral confrontation with a ruthless indifferent, beyond the slogans, the risks global warming. Before this, I read four novels by McEwan. Two Atonement and Saturday , I've devoured and adored to the point of them repeatedly recommended. The other two, Enduring Love and C brace for Guests , I was momentarily brought to decide not to read nothing of this page, so I was shocked and impressed. Solar and then came out the description on the back cover intrigued me a lot and pushed to give another chance to McEwan.
And this novel is going to be placed exactly in the middle. You can read how you can not read. If you read it, it is not wasted time. Otherwise, you have not lost anything.
This view is partly due to shortcomings and my interests: physics I mean little or nothing and I are therefore a bit 'bored to read the (many) pages of theories and prototype tools to save the world from global warming.
Even the plot, I think, misses something. The novel develops into three periods, four or five years away from one another: from one side you see is the evolution of theories and projects to "save the world", is the protagonist's personal life (which is anything but funny), a genius awarded the Nobel Prize a few years before that she struggles between her health problems, his many lovers (with all the scandal and ensuing aftermath in time) and his desire for power and success stronger than everything.
The problem is that everything is quite scontantata and predictable. E 'expected return of some characters of the first part in the third, it is foreseeable that the failure of the protagonist, and is likely also that which is not that in the end, purposely left open by the author in an attempt to attract the attention of the reader (do not know about you, but I hate the final on hold when there is no reason that they are).
But there is something you save: tragicomic anecdotes (like the snowmobile), some more or less implicit criticism of the style of government past and present and the low interest in the environment when the money in the game are many.
And then I recognized something of the protagonist (and bullshit, but I did just smile when I read it): to be dressed in layers with fifteen to go on the snowmobile and feel at that moment the need to pee ...
Well, you see a little 'if you read it or not ... I do not recommend nor discourage ...
Note to the translation: I would say nothing to report!
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