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If you are not satisfied with the book-review given above, continue[1]…
On the train from Potsdam to Berlin, I was listening to the BBC Radio comedy program Just A Minute on my walkman (yes, it was that long ago, in pre-iPod days) and when Stephen Fry said,
`…my bottoms speak perfect German…’
I burst out laughing. I sensed the stares[2] before I saw. But, how could I explain the joke to my fellow-passengers?
When you read this book, you might find yourself in a similar situation.
Ian McEwan’s `Solar’ does not pretend to be a classic or a cerebral novel. But, on nearly every page, you will find and relish a passage about `current affairs’ (climate-change; physics; future of clean energy; humanities versus sciences; media; women in science; marriage; recession; institutions and funding;…) or, where the author is even better, an observation about human nature. There is humour – subtle, slapstick, coarse, the full range. The author will play mind-games with you, making you feel unsure about what is right or wrong. You might even feel that he is pulling your leg – he does not spare anyone.
The book’s cover will tell you that it is a `story of one man’s greed and self-deception’. When you read this book, you might admit to yourself that you have on more than one occasion behaved or thought like that one man, `Beard, heartless scourge of the frail’.
Michael Beard is the winner of `Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth to six-months class’ and also, the Nobel Prize for Physics.
`He belonged to that class of men – vaguely unprepossessing, often bald, short, fat, clever – who were unaccountably attractive to certain beautiful women. Or he believed he was, and thinking seemed to make it so.’
We find him initially, at the age of fifty-three, in a delicate situation with his fifth wife:
`Beard was surprised to find how complicated it was to be the cuckold…No woman had ever looked or sounded so desirable as the wife he suddenly could not have.’
I read this book alone and I found that it is a book best read alone. For example, try reading this scene, with Beard and his first wife Massie, to your better-half:
`…lay side by side on their backs in the dark while she broke the news that she was leaving him…What he experienced was a compound of joy and relief…caused a tear of gratitude to roll down his cheek. He also felt fierce impatience for her to be gone. It crossed his mind to offer to drive her to the station now, but there were no trains from Lewes at 3 a.m., and she had not packed…she saw the dampness around his eyes. Firmly and deliberately she whispered, `I will not be blackmailed, Michael. I will not, repeat not, be emotionally manipulated by you into staying.’…’[3]
Is it a novel about ‘climate-change’? That[4] is also there, of course. On this topic alone, we seem to be sure about the author’s stand. The general public is even provided with an excuse,
`…to take the matter seriously would be to think about it all the time. Everything else shrank before it…Daily life would not permit it.’
The arguments of those who deny the phenomena of global warming and the imperative need for `clean energy’ is shrugged aside with,
`You ’re not convinced. Here’s the worst case. Suppose the near impossible – the thousand are wrong and the one is right, the data are all skewed, there’s no warming. It’s a mass delusion among scientists, or a plot. Then we still have the old stand-bys. Energy security, air pollution, peak oil.’
Yes, aren’t those reasons enough?
The author treats science and scientists with a lot of understanding. The author has done his homework well and he expects at least a fraction of that effort from his readers.
We will feel like nodding in agreement with
`…he read up on the latest, on Bagger, Lambert and Gustavsson – of course! BLG was not a sandwich – and their Langrangian description of coincident M2-branes. God may or may not have played dice, but surely He was nowhere near this clever, or such a show-off. The material world simply could not be so complicated.’
And, probably scratch our heads while we read the unearthed citation for Michael Beard’s Nobel Prize[5].
For those who require a commentary on self-help, a moral at the end of the story, a complex plot, strong and admirable characters and a pithy ending, this is not your book.
Are there any other problems? None, methinks[6].
I wait for Ian McEwan’s next book. Will it be based on the Cameron-Clegg matrimony & divorce or the post-euro EU or the rise & fall of emerging nations?
BACK TO POST [1] If you are looking for info about the plot and story, buy the book or do a search on the Net.
BACK TO POST [2] I recently heard a story about Frau Dr. Merkel and colleagues who treated poor Mr. Papandreou to similar stares while he tried to barter a Greek tragedy for German aid and, at the end of a long pause with the accompanying music of falling euro, she nodded with a sigh, `Aaaaaarrhsooooo…’
BACK TO POST [3] Did your better-half ask you `What are you trying to suggest?’
BACK TO POST [4] Global warming is definitely the `hottest’ topic of the season – I cannot escape it. I hear it from my niece who is in primary school and also, from the chief economists in investment banks (when they are interested, you know that trouble is on its way). When I hear about carbon trading and carbon credits, I cannot suppress repressed guilt concerning sub-prime credit. And, when carbon-spewing industries can go about their business after buying carbon credits, it seems that someone has reached the conclusion that the minimum of the sum of quantities is equal to the sum of minimized quantities?
BACK TO POST [5] The description of the Feynman Plaid seems to echo part of a result in topology `a turn of 4 pi is no turn at all’.
BACK TO POST [6]If you would like to be the bright and enthusiastic junior fellow or post-doc seeking a fellowship or a research position, stand up and say, `Sir, on page 217, the numbers 399 and 663 are not equivalent with pi rotation; can it be 699 and 669?’
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