Just finished it; made me
laugh.
Themes: global warming and the scientific
controversy around it; academic life and especially funding of academic research; the
onset of old age and what it means for a man about his sex life, his health, his
relationship with his children, his marriage(s), his career and especially his
reputation and legacy; greed of all kinds; how humanity might be able to face up to and
deal with problems as serious as global warming.
Plot
summary: Main character, physicist Michael Beard, heads a UK government-funded research
institute on global warming, mainly because he won a Nobel prize, many years ago, for a
piece of work on relativity. He provides scientific gravitas, and accepted the role
because his career has been less than glorious since the Nobel. A group of younger, more
able physicists at the institute includes Tom Aldous, all of whom Beard finds
unimpressive yet threatening, with their energy and idealism. When he discovers both
that his latest wife is having an affair and that she may truly be 'the one' (though the
two facts could be connected), in a dejected moment he agrees to go on a global warming
fact-finding mission to the Arctic. It's a shambles of poor organisation and
selfishness, without much hard science being done.
On his
return, he finds his wife Patrice is also having an affair with Aldous, whom he
introduced to her. A heated discussion in Beard's kitchen results in Tom slipping and
hitting his head, and dying. Beard successfully frames his wife's other lover, a builder
called Tarpin, for the death, but he does have Aldous' research notes on photosynthesis,
which they were discussing. He builds his further reputation on it, obscuring the fact
that it was not his own work. He becomes an authority on solar power and artificial
photosynthesis, finding venture capital, an excellent project manager, Toby Hammer, and
a site in the US to build the first experimental power
plant.
His new girlfriend Melissa adores him,
and she's a good cook; perfect for a glutton. But she desperately wants a child, and
eventually becomes pregnant by him, and has a daughter, with whom Beard has a warm
though intermittent relationship. Out in sunny New Mexico, he also sleeps with (and not
much more than that) another girlfriend, Darlene, a waitress (more food). He's just
about managing to keep it all together - the plant's grand opening, his relationships
with two women and with his daughter, his obesity and poor health, his relations with
his investors - when events coalesce against him. Melissa and Darlene meet and find out
about each other at first hand, a British government lawyer appears, to sue him over
having stolen Aldous' work, which makes his project manager resign, and the investors
disappear, and Tarpin reappears after his jail sentence and smashes all his solar
panels. The novel ends with him sitting over a meal (of course) as Darlene and Melissa
storm into the restaurant, with his daughter by Melissa, Catriona, skipping in front. As
he rises, he feels his heart swell; with love for his daughter? with indigestion? with
another heart attack?
The book's a departure for McEwan,
more sardonic and farcical than his other novels, and has been favourably reviewed in
the UK. Here's an interview with him on his publisher's
website:
A
well-drawn anti-hero, who's also a metaphor, some marvellous set pieces. I found it a
fine entertainment.
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