The Easter break helped me make inroads into a tottering pile. Disappointments were matched by a positive surprise:
- Much anticipated, Ian McEwan’s Solar has plenty going for it: musical, supple writing; vigorous opening scenes; a virginal field, that of climate change satire, to stalk in; and two very funny comedic scenes. But the storyline lacks punch and the central character – Michael Beard, a philandering, glutinous Nobel prizewinning physicist out to save the world for his own benefit – fails to cohere. If, as I’ve heard someone argue, Beard stands in for blundering humanity careening towards global warming calamity – McEwan has disguised the message well. As always, this is a writer worth reading but out-and-out satire is not his strength. 2½ stars
- Another British heavyweight also disappoints. In The Pregnant Widow, Keith Nearing, the earnest, naive hero with a passion for serious literature that stains his life, stumbles through the massive sexual changes of the seventies. Martin Amis is at his scorching stylistic peak, constantly teasing and challenging the reader, but the plot is humdrum enough to elicit regular yawns. There are all too few laughs in this sexual comedy and only in the final section, whizzing through more than three decades of Nearing’s life, does a story bestir itself. A baffling outing by one of my favourites. 2 stars
- By contrast, Jonathan Dee’s The Privileges: A Novel is compact and superbly paced. The novel follows a ‘beautiful couple’ from their wedding through hedge fund plenty to their post-business, New-York-style-charity days. Dee switches between the pair and their son and daughter with seeming ease. But what triumphs most is the author’s subversive voice, at once caustic and empathetic. Amazing as it seems, you end up hating these nouveau riche while deeply caring. One of the books of the year. 4 stars