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Solar
- Narrated by: Roger Allam, Ian McEwan
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
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Publisher's summary
Universally acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest novelists, Ian McEwan is a Booker Prize-winning, best-selling literary master. He displays a fresh facet of his considerable talent in Solar, a satirical novel rife with blistering humor.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Michael Beard is fast approaching 60, a mere shell of the academic titan he once was. While his fifth marriage falls apart, Michael suddenly finds himself with an unexpected opportunity to reinvigorate his career and possibly save humankind from the growing threat of global warming.
This audio includes an exclusive interview with the author.
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Some people deserve everything horrible that happens to them. Michael Beard is definitely one of those people. Booker prize-winner Ian McEwan (Atonement, Saturday) has created the self-centered, loathsome character of Beard for his latest satirical novel, Solar, but you don’t really get the full effect of Beard’s appalling narcissism unless you listen to Roger Allam’s performance of the book.
Allam has one of those precise, slightly-condescending, upper-crust English accents that perfectly suits Beard’s character. You can clearly imagine Beard looking down his nose at everything the mere mortals around him say or do as Allam intones McEwan’s carefully chosen words. An award-winning stage actor who has also appeared in dozens of movies (The Queen, V for Vendetta) and television dramas, Allam specializes in portraying authoritative men with commanding stage presences. And like any great actor, Allam also manages to make us feel sympathetic for Beard a pompous, adulterous, Nobel Prize-winning physicist despite his monumental character flaws.
Without giving too much of the book’s ingenious plot away, Solar revolves around Beard’s marital troubles and his quest to discover an alternative energy source. Sounds noble on the surface, but Beard only really seems to care about finding a fashionable subject to research…while receiving a lucrative, six-figure paycheck for doing as little work as possible. The book may seem to jump at times from one location to the next, but McEwan weaves all the plotlines together in the final, brilliant chapter, set in the New Mexico desert. In the end, Beard and patient listeners are justly rewarded by McEwan in his latest, most amusing novel to date. Ken Ross
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Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
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I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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The Ghost Writer
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
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Too close to the truth?
- By carl801 on 11-24-07
By: Robert Harris
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White Noise
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event", a lethal black chemical cloud floats over the Gladneys' lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life yet suggesting something ominous.
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Designed to be analyzed by an English class
- By RI in Canada on 10-15-16
By: Don DeLillo
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Property
- Stories Between Two Novellas
- By: Lionel Shriver
- Narrated by: Lionel Shriver
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A striking new collection of ten short stories and two novellas that explores the idea of property in every meaning of the word, from the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international best seller We Need to Talk About Kevin.
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Painful and drawn out
- By JR on 06-27-18
By: Lionel Shriver
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Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A lawyer from the London finance house of Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger" Single disappears into thin air.
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The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
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The Chronoliths
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past-and soon to be haunted by the future. In early 21st-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter.
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A haunting, beautiful work...
- By M. Stephenson on 11-20-09
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Ordinary Thunderstorms
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.
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Amazing Story Teller
- By Dorothy on 09-07-14
By: William Boyd
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
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Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
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Stand on Zanzibar
- By: John Brunner, Bruce Sterling - foreword
- Narrated by: Erik Bergmann
- Length: 21 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically - it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. Society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers and mass-marketed psychedelic drugs.
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perfect audio experience
- By Darryl on 03-24-14
By: John Brunner, and others
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Make something, and die.
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Charming and Sweet!!!
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An amazing book about complex human perception
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What listeners say about Solar
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Ranch Girl
- 06-22-11
More sad than funny
I had high hopes for this book, as I am generally fond of satire. However, this novel was by turns boring, depressing, and only occasionally funny. It is risky to have a main character who is unremittingly despicable, and for me this was the real deal breaker. A tight plot might have saved the story, but it wandered a lot, and many of the humorous incidents seemed to be forced into the plot, rather than being a natural part of it. I almost quit halfway through, but I kept going, hoping to get to the part that prompted the glowing reviews. In the end, I was left unsure as to the author's purpose and what he wanted to convey. Was I supposed to scorn scientists, or just recognize that egomaniacal jerks exist in all walks of life...
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Chris Reich
- 05-30-10
Laugh out loud funny...and sometimes not.
This is a very funny and odd book. You have to pay attention to catch the humor and stay on track. If you make a little effort, you'll get some great laughs and hear some very interesting points.
As both a solar astronomer and someone who works in the solar industry, I really enjoyed the book.
One caution. The humor is dry and not for everyone.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- laurel
- 04-14-10
Often hilarious
Narrator does a great job with it, frequently laugh out loud funny. The protagonist is fairly despicable--you have to be willing to spend a lot of time with a raving egotist (but eventually everything catches up with him). McEwan can get bogged down in the science, which is the novel's main fault.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Happy in New Mexico
- 10-09-10
Solar - or the dark side of science
I enjoyed every minute of this book. If you enjoy irony and a humorous peak into the darker motives of academe, you will also love this book.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Robert
- 04-05-10
A book of rare humor and intellegence
Don't let the nay-sayers turn you away from this book! It's marvelous! Probably my favorite of all McEwan's books. (I do have them all)
I was not bored for one moment. This is a 'laugh out loud' hilarious, wonderfully witty book! It's full of surprise twists and turns that will keep you wondering what could possibly happen next to this character.
The only thing wrong with the book is that it has to end.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Sharlotte
- 07-06-21
Loved It! 5 Stars Plus!
This was a really good book, the rare kind I get excited about finding. It was intelligent, funny, clever, well-narrated, and interesting, with a factual, researched current theme and a fully-developed protagonist, and a literary style that employed a superb command of vocabulary and plot, with hilarious deadpan humor thrown in. I was held captive and didn't want it to end.
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- Michael
- 09-25-12
+1 overall in light of tech company patent wars
If you could sum up Solar in three words, what would they be?
Science, Patents, Technology
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
Made everything clear. Be sure to listen to interview with the author.
What about Roger Allam and Ian McEwan ’s performance did you like?
Roger Allam is a native Britian. In the story he throws on an American accent for some characters. The result is interesting and laudible.
If you could rename Solar, what would you call it?
Squander
Any additional comments?
This story depicts how a technological solution to climate change is squandered by the character flaws of its inventor, the greed of others, and the unfortunate consequences of patent law. This story reminds me of the patent wars between the big tech companies.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Miguel
- 09-09-12
Science, sex, lies, fame, humanity.
What did you love best about Solar?
Excellent scientific documentation. Good plot, with real-like characters. History has value as a current issue.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Solar?
When the main character, Michael Beard, decides to change the situation of the accidental death of his wife's lover into a murder committed by his other wife's lover.
What about Roger Allam and Ian McEwan ’s performance did you like?
Excellent!
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Nobel prize winers are only too human...
Any additional comments?
It reminded me of two other books: "The Prize", by Irving Wallace", and "Cantor's dilemma", by Carl Djerassi. Both of them, excellent and also highly recommendable
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- Betsy Fowler
- 07-22-19
An oddly compelling fable with a repellent hero
This novel is hard going despite Roger Allam's sonorous delivery. To say it is a black comedy is to understate how disgusting and nauseating are most of the scenarios it presents. The main character is truly revolting, as are most of the others. McEwan is a genius who can make a misanthrope of even the most generous reader!
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- Thomas
- 01-12-24
Brilliant, funny, approachable.
Can't believe some of the reviews here. Never in my life have I come across a book and narrator so perfectly matched. Both deserve giant kudos for this most enjoyable and thought-provoking listen. Highly recommended.
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