Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

Michael Beard is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who has ceased to produce any innovative thinking. His fifth marriage is floundering and Patrice, his wife, is bringing it to an end in revenge for his eternal philandering. He makes his living by speaking at conferences and lending his name to research organisations.

A freak accident puts new scientific material into his hands and resolves some of his marital problems. He unashamedly adopts the world-saving theories as his own and is on the point of launching his solar technology when his womanising, and professional dishonesty come to a simultaneous climax.

This new Ian McEwan novel is darkly satirical but also hilarious in its portrayal of Beard, through whose mind we receive an unreliable account of each new experience.  He spends an inimitable week in Spitsbergen with a group of scientists and I laughed at every page.

The episode on a train where he aggressively eats his fellow passenger’s packet of crisps is an old chestnut retold in Ian McEwan’s superb prose.

The novel has pathos, too, in the final chapters when little Catriona appears.

There is something for everybody in this wonderful novel.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.