Title: Solar
Author: Ian McEwan
Year: 2010
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Pages: 287
This novel falls into the science-fiction-as-backdrop rather than science-fiction-as-premise/focus category. It's really a psychological novel about narcissism, deviousness, and self-serving lies, with some technology thrown in so there's something to steal. This isn't a bildungsroman; the unsympathetic narrator doesn't learn anything or change. McEwan's cheat of the reader is that [highlight to see spoiler] despite the buildup and the screws tightening around Beard, he manages to evade his just desserts by expediently dying in the last paragraph. How convenient, and what lazy writing. [end spoiler]
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