Word: lifeness
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Michael Beard’s life is a series of contradictions. He is a Nobel Laureate, but also a scientific fraud. He is the chief of a climate research center, but doesn’t believe in global warming. Riding on the coattails of his own youthful contribution to Einstein’s groundbreaking work, Beard is thoroughly dissatisfied with his life and disillusioned with the society that continues to laud him for the sole professional achievement he made decades ago. Ian McEwan’s latest novel introduces Beard just as his fifth marriage is dissolving, when an accident...
...Solar,” Beard is neither a champion of alternative energy nor persuaded by the dire warnings about rising seas and melting ice. Beard refuses to be won over by the emotional appeals and mass hysteria about a phenomenon that has little immediate impact on his daily life. As one of Beard’s mistresses laments, to take action against global warming “would be to think about it all the time,” something that “daily life would not permit.” But when he is presented with the opportunity...
...that enables Beard to recast himself as a friend of the environment. But “Solar” complicates the theme of accidental change that McEwan returns to so often by incorporating a new idea of willful self-deception. Though Beard believes that “barring accidents, life does not change,” he is constantly going through self-imposed reincarnations of his character. Beard is unaware of these changes in himself because he is able to convince himself that his new persona always existed...
With each chapter, Beard discards the unwanted pieces of his former life in order to strive for some higher plane of personal or professional achievement. Beard is “a man of science” with “an automatic respect for internal consistency.” He knows truth to be “impregnable,” but he also knows that he can abandon his old life in order to inhabit his own reality. Beard believes that after learning “the tricks of managing, of simply being” he will reach...
...Solar” comes to a close, Beard is forced to confront the various deceptions and half-truths that have defined his life. A chameleon, Beard nevertheless begins to lose control of his relationships, of the image he projects on the world, and of his own beliefs and emotions. The man who shunned commitment and love in favor of status, pleasure, and freedom realizes that the only true solace resides in the personal relationships that endure life’s changes. McEwan’s writing becomes increasingly fatalistic and forlorn as the novel progresses, and Beard realizes that even...