Ian McEwan has just been awarded the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for Solar. As part of this quirky award for comic writing, McEwan will have a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig renamed Solar in his honour!

Here's what we thought of the book...

Reviewed by Sophy in the Good Energy marketing team 

A new novel by Ian McEwan is an eagerly-anticipated event – and when the plot of the novel revolves around finding solutions to climate change, it’s enough to make you pre-order the book from Waterstone’s (a first for me!)

So, does Solar live up to the anticipation?

First off, presumably to lighten what could be (arguably should be) such a serious subject, McEwan introduces humour for the first time into his work – with a series of comedic set-pieces mixed with much darker humour. The main protagonist, physicist Michael Beard, is a man of prodigious appetites – greedy for food and drink, greedy for sex and greedy for critical acclaim. And this unattractive combination eventually leads to his downfall. The analogy with our planet is clear – over-consumption is sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

A source of inspiration for the novel was McEwan’s trip to the Arctic in 2005 organised by Cape Farewell – the charity which promotes a cultural response to climate change, and a Good Energy partner. One wonders what happened to him there to lead to the farcical scenes (suspected frostbite to a very tender appendage, among other things) portrayed in the novel!

McEwan is known for his detailed and thorough research, and Solar deals with some huge scientific ideas and makes them easy for the layman to understand. As someone who works in the renewable energy business I loved how early on in the novel, a plan to develop an easy solution to climate change in the form of a rooftop wind turbine for urban areas gets abandoned later in the book in favour of massive-scale solar power from the desert in New Mexico.

For me, the most resonant part of the novel is when Beard presents to an audience of bankers his thoughts on climate change and the fantastic investment opportunities it presents – a speech I could easily imagine our own CEO making at a similar conference – only to be brushed off by the tall men in suits who are only concerned with the here-and-now and immediate returns.

McEwan chooses not to engage with climate-change scepticism in the novel – throughout the book man-made climate change is presented as undisputable fact. And when one of Beard's colleague’s expresses a concern that perhaps the climate isn’t changing after all, Beard reassures him: "It's a catastrophe. Relax!"

Opinions in the blogosphere are sharply divided as to the overall merits of the book. For me, the novel was not only entertaining but also managed to get a serious message across in a humorous way. But at times I felt McEwen was laying on the jokes with a sledgehammer, when a more subtle approach would have been more effective. Read the book, and make your own mind up – and please share your views with us by commenting on the blog.