“Beard was not wholly sceptical about climate change. It was one in a list of issues, of looming sorrows, that comprised the background to the news, and he read about it, vaguely deplored it and expected governments to meet and take action.”

This book, with its tactile black cover, arrives as the first major book of the year in terms of the hype and expectation that one of our great writers is serving up his latest offering.

Bearing in mind McEwan’s last book was the slim On Chesil Beach, which I felt was 80% about one moment and then had an ending that faded and ran too fast, it was going to be interesting to see what Solar was all about. At 283 pages you expected a start, middle and ending and they were delivered. Split into three parts the years go by and the attitude towards global warming becomes more cynical and opportunistic.

At the centre of what is often a farce is the Nobel prize winning physicist Michael Beard who is introduced as his fifth marriage starts to fall apart. Driven by his passions for sex, booze and crisps Beard lurches through the collapse of his marriage, the death of a colleague and the framing of his wife’s former lover with all the lights showing green. In between he does his climate change credentials the world of good by going out to be threatened by polar bears in the artic.

But sensing an opportunity to make some money out of solar power Beard steals his dead colleagues ideas and launches himself into a career as a climate change believer. It is not that he doesn’t believe but he is selfishly looking for a role for himself to make something out of it. Mixed in with his preaching about climate change is a need for self satisfaction that is physically shown in his determination to chase skirt and eat and drink himself to death despite doctor’s warnings.

Most of the coverage and interviews I’ve seen with McEwan have focused on the way he uses humour to almost spring a surprise on the reader about the importance of climate change. If there is a personal takeaway from this book it is the way that despite being clearly a clever man Beard spans the nine years of the story getting fatter, more unhealthy and into deeper trouble in his personal relationships. If you want to change, whether that be yourself or the planet, you need to start now. The slide of Beard towards death is a powerful reminder for us all.

This is one of those books that builds and builds and then delivers a climax that was nowhere near what you were expecting. The same could be said for the characters Edward and Florence in this novella by Ian McEwan.

Both main characters are paralysed with fear of the sexual act. The difference between them is that when it comes to the crunch on their wedding night he can get it up and start to get into the mood but she cannot. In a classic example of the dangers of not communicating she keeps her fears to herself and then gets into position where she has to try to explain something almost impossible.

His feelings are hurt by the reaction to his premature ejaculation and he becomes angry at her decision to run away down the beach. He dresses and goes after her – a move she both anticipates but then angers at because she has walked a good couple of miles by the time he catches up with her.

In one crucial conversation where misunderstanding about fear, love and lust leads them to both boil over their marriage crumbles away. By this point you have stuck with the weaving in of the back-story with the build up to the disaster that happens on the marriage bed. You realise they love each other and are soul mates in a way that most people only ever dream of.

So you are left wondering what happens next. Reading this as a man the expectation was that Edward would swallow his pride and goes and beg forgiveness after his anger cooled down. You might also have expected a similar move from Florence who said some hurtful things but could have pleaded that it was all to do with the heat of the moment.

But instead having played the wedding evening in almost slow motion McEwan then presses the fast forward button and life starts whizzing by with Edward heading into his forties, sixties and old age. For some readers this is probably where the feeling of an unsatisfactory ending creeps in. It happens quickly and it happens easily.

Just as in the telling the back-story McEwan stresses that these two characters might never have met if a different corner had been turned and another decision taken now fate works the other way. Now regardless of the opportunities, and there are presumably several, Florence and Edward do not run into each other again and as the years go by the chance of reconciliation is missed completely. There is a scene where Florence looks out for Edward at a concert she performs and remembers the promise he made many years before to be there but that is the only hint that she might have gone back to him. For Edward’s part his life drifts and you sense the missed opportunities that would have come if he had a life with Florence. With age comes wisdom and he realises that those words on the beach did not mean what he took them to mean and he should have been more patient.

It would have been interesting to see them meet again after the years of absence but that lingering thought for what might have been is exactly the one McEwan wants to leave you with. In that sense although the fast forwarding at the end could have been slowed a bit the book works and you leave it determined to listen more and speak less in an argument concerning love.

Version read – Vintage paperback

This is one of those books that builds and builds and then delivers a climax that was nowhere near what you were expecting. The same could be said for the characters Edward and Florence in this novella by Ian McEwan.

Both main characters are paralysed with fear of the sexual act. The difference between them is that when it comes to the crunch on their wedding night he can get it up and start to get into the mood but she cannot. In a classic example of the dangers of not communicating she keeps her fears to herself and then gets into position where she has to try to explain something almost impossible.

His feelings are hurt by the reaction to his premature ejaculation and he becomes angry at her decision to run away down the beach. He dresses and goes after her – a move she both anticipates but then angers at because she has walked a good couple of miles by the time he catches up with her.

In one crucial conversation where misunderstanding about fear, love and lust leads them to both boil over their marriage crumbles away. By this point you have stuck with the weaving in of the back-story with the build up to the disaster that happens on the marriage bed. You realise they love each other and are soul mates in a way that most people only ever dream of.

So you are left wondering what happens next. Reading this as a man the expectation was that Edward would swallow his pride and goes and beg forgiveness after his anger cooled down. You might also have expected a similar move from Florence who said some hurtful things but could have pleaded that it was all to do with the heat of the moment.

But instead having played the wedding evening in almost slow motion McEwan then presses the fast forward button and life starts whizzing by with Edward heading into his forties, sixties and old age. For some readers this is probably where the feeling of an unsatisfactory ending creeps in. It happens quickly and it happens easily.

Just as in the telling the back-story McEwan stresses that these two characters might never have met if a different corner had been turned and another decision taken now fate works the other way. Now regardless of the opportunities, and there are presumably several, Florence and Edward do not run into each other again and as the years go by the chance of reconciliation is missed completely. There is a scene where Florence looks out for Edward at a concert she performs and remembers the promise he made many years before to be there but that is the only hint that she might have gone back to him. For Edward’s part his life drifts and you sense the missed opportunities that would have come if he had a life with Florence. With age comes wisdom and he realises that those words on the beach did not mean what he took them to mean and he should have been more patient.

It would have been interesting to see them meet again after the years of absence but that lingering thought for what might have been is exactly the one McEwan wants to leave you with. In that sense although the fast forwarding at the end could have been slowed a bit the book works and you leave it determined to listen more and speak less in an argument concerning love.

Version read – Vintage paperback

Sometimes authors choose to allude to a case of cause and effect and in other cases the results become the content of the novel. Ian McEwan chooses to show the consequences of the death of both parents to a family of four, all at various ages under 19.

The first to go is the father, who is remote and not particularly missed after he keels over with a heart attack while laying out a cement path in the garden. The family gravitates around the mother but she is ill and starts to head downhill. Even before she dies each of the children have had some character quirks outlined. The main focus, Jack, starts to lose interest in hygiene and social relationships and his much younger brother Tom toys with the idea of becoming a girl. The mother is ironically not that strong a character. She doesn’t say a great deal and for the last few weeks of her life she is bedbound. But her death removes any pretence that the family can carry on as normal.

Once the mother dies the cracks, both literal and metaphorical appear and the house, with its cement filled garden, becomes cut off from reality in almost every sense of the word. The cement is used to bury the mother in a trunk in the cellar. Finally there is an entrant from the outside worlds in the form of the eldest girl’s boyfriend. He discovers the secret in the cellar and in the end, after catching jack and his sister involved in incest, calls in social services to end the situation.

But before Derek makes the call to get other people involved with the family things have really fallen apart. Tom has started dressing as a girl and then entered a baby phase. Sue the next in age lives in the pages of her diary, which she addresses to her mother. Jack drifts through the day never knowing the time or washing and Julie plays at being the mother but has a tendency to revert to being immature.

Without the support and the moral guidelines of the mother the children quickly lose routine, self-responsibility and any motivation for interacting with the world and the prospect of returning to school at the end of the holidays is dismissed by Jack.

The final scene has been brewing and in some ways is over done in that you almost don’t need to see where the logical conclusion of their world goes without boundaries. What you have to give McEwan credit for is the ability to create a sense of place. The summer heat and the strangeness of the large house with the corpse in the cellar is something you can picture very clearly. Of the few McEwan books I have managed to read it is always this sense of place that is brilliantly done and it is the same here. The story might not always be comfortable to read and the way of showing how the grief is impacting the children sometimes feel too much but it does leave you thinking and that is a positive.

Version read – Vintage paperback