Solar by Ian McEwan

This novel, Ian McEwan's latest, tells the story of Michael Beard, a Nobel laureate for whom success in life seems to have come to early. Although the reader can't help but be reminded of Michael's success, he's riding his laurels from the time the book opens. From someone who's intellectually lazy and personally cruel, Beard develops into an even less moral person throughout the course of the book. While Beard personally becomes very interested in the climate change debate, the book itself is more about the personal disasters that Beard fails to navigate than the global disaster that looms over us all. As I have come to expect, McEwan's prose is magnificent.