Solar (novel)

Solar

Cover of the first edition
Author	Ian McEwan
Cover artist	Andy Chatman (photo) Suzanne Dean (design)
Language	English
Genre	Satire
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	18 March 2010
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	304
ISBN

Solar is a novel by author Ian McEwan, first published on 18 March 2010 by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House. It is a satire about a jaded Nobel-winning physicist whose dysfunctional personal life and cynical ambition see him pursuing a solar-energy based solution for climate change.

Michael Beard is an eminent, Nobel Prize–winning physicist whose own life is chaotic and complicated. The novel takes the reader chronologically through three significant periods in Beard's life: 2000, 2005 and 2009, interspersed with some recollections of his student days in Oxford.

Middle-aged, balding and slightly overweight womanizer Beard falls into a depression after learning that his fifth wife, Patrice, has begun an affair with their builder, a man called Tarpin. Despite being a Nobel award winning physicist Beard realizes all his best work was done as a young man and now coasts on his reputation heading a research centre in Reading that seeks to harness wind energy. One of the younger researchers at the centre, Tom Aldous, tries to speak to Beard about the potential of solar energy but Beard shuts him down.

After seeing Patrice with a bruise on her face Beard goes to confront Tarpin, but finds himself no match for the man and leaves after causing a scene in front of Tarpin's neighbours. Depressed over his marriage Beard accepts an invitation to go to the Arctic as part of a retreat on climate change. While there he realizes he is the only scientist among groups of artists who believe passionately in climate change (which he remains skeptical of) though they treat him with respect, believing his research in wind-based energy constitutes concrete steps towards combatting global warming.

Beard returns home from his trip deciding to divorce Patrice. Arriving early however he encounters Tom Aldous in his bathrobe. After Beard tells him he will ruin his career Aldous begs him not to imploring him that his research into photosynthesis and solar energy is more important than the feud between the two of them. While pleading for his career Aldous trips on a rug and strikes his head against a coffee table. Beard realizes that if he calls the police he could be blamed for Aldous's death and instead plants evidence of Tarpin's presence.

Tarpin is indeed arrested and convicted of Aldous's murder and Beard is painted in the media as a sympathetic figure who had been cuckolded by his wife. Aldous's research on solar energy is given to Beard as it had been labelled with his name.