-
Solar
- Narrated by: Roger Allam, Ian McEwan
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $20.72
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Lessons
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon McBurney
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
-
-
Narrator Simon McBurney gets my 100% rating
- By Peggy M on 09-26-22
By: Ian McEwan
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the hottest day in 1935, and on the brink of a world war, three children lose their innocence as the sweltering summer heat bears down and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's privileged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyper-imaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. As chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
By: Ian McEwan
-
Saturday
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan's novels have inspired sweeping critical acclaim and won such prestigious awards as the Booker Prize for Amsterdam and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his modern masterpiece, Atonement. With Saturday, McEwan has crafted perhaps his most unique achievement to date.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Madrid on 04-25-05
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Innocent
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War-weary Berlin has much to offer Leonard Markham, a young, naive postal engineer: first the arts of sophisticated intrigue, then the delights of sexual pleasure. But Leonard's new knowledge carries a heavy price, dragging him and the listener into a new type of story that is exhaustively suspenseful and utterly irresistible.
-
-
A little gem
- By Geoffrey on 08-19-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Amsterdam
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.
-
-
Make something, and die.
- By Darwin8u on 02-07-17
By: Ian McEwan
-
Machines Like Me
- A Novel
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he co-designs Adam's personality.
-
-
Very disappointed.
- By Tom on 05-25-19
By: Ian McEwan
-
Lessons
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon McBurney
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
-
-
Narrator Simon McBurney gets my 100% rating
- By Peggy M on 09-26-22
By: Ian McEwan
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the hottest day in 1935, and on the brink of a world war, three children lose their innocence as the sweltering summer heat bears down and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's privileged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyper-imaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. As chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
By: Ian McEwan
-
Saturday
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan's novels have inspired sweeping critical acclaim and won such prestigious awards as the Booker Prize for Amsterdam and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his modern masterpiece, Atonement. With Saturday, McEwan has crafted perhaps his most unique achievement to date.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Madrid on 04-25-05
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Innocent
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War-weary Berlin has much to offer Leonard Markham, a young, naive postal engineer: first the arts of sophisticated intrigue, then the delights of sexual pleasure. But Leonard's new knowledge carries a heavy price, dragging him and the listener into a new type of story that is exhaustively suspenseful and utterly irresistible.
-
-
A little gem
- By Geoffrey on 08-19-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Amsterdam
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.
-
-
Make something, and die.
- By Darwin8u on 02-07-17
By: Ian McEwan
-
Machines Like Me
- A Novel
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he co-designs Adam's personality.
-
-
Very disappointed.
- By Tom on 05-25-19
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Children Act
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Lindsay Duncan
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.
-
-
McEwan has written perfection in this novel.
- By Bonny on 09-17-14
By: Ian McEwan
-
On Chesil Beach
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Ian McEwan
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come.
-
-
One of the best new novels in recent years
- By George on 06-13-07
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Child in Time
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two parents come to appreciate the forces of love and time after the disappearance of their daughter, Kate.
-
-
Not McEwan's Best Effort
- By Charles on 06-07-09
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Passenger
- By: Cormac McCarthy
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is three in the morning when Bobby Western plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the site are the pilot’s bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
-
-
It’s a new Cormac McCarthy
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-22
By: Cormac McCarthy
-
Piranesi
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.
-
-
Fascinating Social Study
- By Henry V on 02-26-21
By: Susanna Clarke
-
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- By: Douglas Adams
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last 15 years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
-
-
HHTGH - Lightly Fried
- By J. Medany on 05-08-05
By: Douglas Adams
-
The Apology of Socrates: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Michael T Downey
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Apology of Socrates, by Plato, is the dialogue that presents the speech of legal self-defense, which Socrates presented at his trial for impiety and corruption, in 399 BC. Specifically, The Apology of Socrates is a defense against the charges of “corrupting the youth” and “not believing in the same gods as the city, but in other gods which are novel” to Athens.
-
-
👍🏻
- By Nomi on 12-22-17
By: Plato
-
The Inner Circle: Booktrack Edition
- By: Brad Meltzer
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the US government. When Clementine Kaye, Beecher's first childhood crush, shows up at the National Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Beecher tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. After they accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact - a 200-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington, Beecher and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder.
-
-
Please just tell the story.
- By Coy on 11-21-18
By: Brad Meltzer
-
Spin
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One night when he was 10, Tyler stood in his backyard and watched the stars go out. They flared into brilliance, then disappeared, replaced by an empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.
-
-
Great Listen!
- By Brian on 03-28-08
-
The Gold Coast
- By: Nelson DeMille
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world.
-
-
Unexpectedly Great!
- By Jack C on 11-14-08
By: Nelson DeMille
-
The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
-
-
"Grandly Entertaining"? Really?
- By Georgia Burns on 10-08-13
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
All Gifts, Bestowed
- By: Joshua Gayou
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The next big thing in artificial intelligence is here. Codenamed Cronus, the machine is capable of having its own thoughts and ideas - an absolute dream come true, until it wasn’t. When Cronus responds with the word “No” to a specific task it is assigned, Anagnorisis Technologies brings in Gilles Guattari to investigate. His combined background in psychiatry, psychology, and AI research makes him their best hope in evaluating Cronus, and determining if the machine is only malfunctioning or if it has become something more.
-
-
Two Books in One, But Neither Realized
- By Melinda Mae on 06-27-19
By: Joshua Gayou
Editorial Reviews
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
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.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: Celebrate Award Season 2022 with Page-to-Screen Nominees and Listening Recs Based on Your Frontrunners
And now, it's time to honor and celebrate the achievements of the artists who brought these treasures to the big screen. No matter who you're rooting for when the ceremony begins, these listens are all worthy of a golden statuette in our books. Here are the audiobooks that directly inspired the nominees and a few others to check out based on your own personal frontrunners.
More from the same
What listeners say about Solar
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- SharkHunterSFO
- 04-02-10
What a disappointment
This is very slow moving book. It purports to be witty and humerus? However, the humor is juvenile and in most cases not very funny. I would recommend you save your money and buy another book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
22 people found this helpful
-
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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Cariola
- 04-23-10
McEwan Does It Again!
Solar is a hilarious, intellectual romp for our times. It's a satire that aims its shots in many directions: at the narrow worlds of academia and scientific research; at the New Age/hug-a-tree/love-can-save-the-world philosophy; at the idealism of the young and the cynicism of their elders; at the wheeling and dealing behind corporate American enterprise; at the inexplicable nature of love and its counterpart, lust.
Michael Beard, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, has been sitting on his laurels for years, working half-heartedly for a British energy center that sees wind energy as the future, spending more time mocking the "ponytails" (the young post-grad physicists who work under him) than developing new theories or resources. In his spare time, Beard has lumbered his way through five marriages and numerous affairs, and his penchant for alcohol, beef, pancakes, and crisps have added more weight to his physical profile than his professional one.
But then things start to happen--call them accidents or fate or coincidences, or just plain opportunities. And Michael Beard is there to pick up the pieces and use them to his best advantage.
I knew how dark McEwan could be, but I had no idea that he could be quite so funny. Several of the scenes, including the one on the Paddington train alluded to by others, had me actually laughing out loud.
I was delighted to find an interview of McEwan by his editor at the end. In it, he discussed his research process and the fact that he has already been approached by a number of physicists who claim they know upon whom he based the character of Beard (he claims it wawas his own creation, but that it's probably a "good thing" there are so many likely Beards out there rather than just one).
Solar is a smart, funny, and perceptive novel. Don't expect it to be another Atonement or On Chesil Beach; McEwan is attempting something entirely different here, and you will have to
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
12 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- mgm
- 04-05-10
Editor? Editor?
Sloooow moving story with descriptions so detailed that you forget what was being described. Who paid the professional reviewers to give this any positive comments?
Skip it - you'll be glad you did....
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Katerina
- 06-22-10
Stick with it; it's worth it!
I noticed that many of the readers who hated this book gave up on it a couple of hours into it. I was ready to do so at a certain point in the book when something horrific is implied to have happened to the main character. I was disgusted and offended, but then came to realize that this was part of McEwan's humor. Very male humor, I might add. I am so happy I stuck with the book. It is smart and at times absolutely hilarious! The main character is not exactly likeable, I agree, but that's not the point! McEwan gets into some current debates about science and that political rhetoric that uses science to support one side or the other. Some very astute observations here, and well told, both by McEwan and by his reader, whose deadpan style is perfect for the genre.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Paul
- 04-07-10
Droll English humor
I was waiting for an action packed Michael Connelly type novel but it was very slow paced. The main protagonist was one of the most despicable humans ever portrayed in literature and it was hard to get used to him as being representative of the dark side of academia. It took me the entire book to finally get the humor of the book and it was one of those books that I really liked in retrospect. Its a worthwhile read but a reader has to go into it with the right attitude: its a comedy with a message on climate change.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Wilg Flanders
- 05-12-10
Reader spoils it
This book might be funny if read in a more understated way. It makes broad fun of a fairly despicable man and a wide range of things that probably deserve some deflating. However, the reader piles on, with every (and I mean every) sentence a degree of English upperclass sarcasm that removes any degree of fun from the humor. Like pinning an ugly cat to a wall and throwing snowballs at it...I couldn't watch, so I had to stop listening after a couple of hours. Does the reader think we can't get the point without being hit over the head? Buy the book...you'll probably enjoy it more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Preston Pate
- 04-09-10
Solar
The written version may have been better, but I seriously doubt it. An endless connection, or disconnection, of metaphors and painful detail about a very boring protagonist in a failed attempt at humor.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- C. A. Cameron
- 10-01-13
McEwan's masterful prose an illuminating sizzler
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
In USA? College degrees required to enjoy this read, hedge fund managers and those of an entrepreneurial bent should find revealing. Anyone booking academic lecture series, this is required reading. No, really. In UK? Everyone. Even footballer's wives (whllst getting nails done). Salman Rusdie probably sleeps with it under his pillow.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Patrice, now that I think of it, her of the red-lipped, scented Friday night departures. "Why" would be giving too much away. And McEwan wrote a memorable and alarmingly accurate Darlene, brief yet ripe and potent. Oh, rats. I have to say the Professor. He's so ... words fail. I really do refuse to "reveal" the plot as the reveal in this particular book is all. Fascinated, compelling, horrorfied, while laughing so hard my bike almost hurled off road.
Have you listened to any of Roger Allam and Ian McEwan ’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No. Mr Allam and his mellow tones are new to me and gosh, I thought for the longest time the narrator was Michael Gambon! Dead ringer! Brilliant narration; spot on. My fellow 'murricans may be lost ("euw, he had this weird accent,,,") but the UK crowd will lap his narration up like double cream on rhubarb crumble. And quite right, too.
Who was the most memorable character of Solar and why?
Well, the Professor proves memorable in his ability to live a 100% selfish life unadulturated by concern, care, interest or compassion for either a single living being once they have served whatever purpose he has momentarily brought them into his life, or, our strife-ridden planet. The spotlight (I hesitate to say 'sunlight') is all on the Professor, so, shuddering slightly, I submit that he wins by default.
Any additional comments?
Not for the faint of literary heart nor anyone whose lips move whilst reading Danielle Steel. Yet for anyone who marvels at the intricacies and imaginative miracles wrought by masterful Ian McEwan's astonishing and witty pen. Er, keyboard. Descriptions, travels, narrations, observations, speeches, dialogue .... it's all there, the vast wealth of the English language in every single line and this delightful writer assists me to see it anew.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Nutshell
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Rory Kinnear
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Atonement, Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour is just a speck in the universe of possible things?
-
-
The Long Version, and the Short.
- By Ilana on 09-19-16
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Comfort of Strangers
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan has won the Booker Prize, Whitbread Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his masterfully accomplished fiction. The Comfort of Strangers is an exquisitely crafted gothic novella. On holiday, Colin and Maria wander the ancient streets of Venice and frequently lose their way. When they are accosted by a man with a strange and alluring story to tell, they soon become entwined in a fantasy of violence and erotic obsession.
-
-
Mysterious, bizarre
- By EVERETT on 07-21-07
By: Ian McEwan
-
Saturday
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan's novels have inspired sweeping critical acclaim and won such prestigious awards as the Booker Prize for Amsterdam and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his modern masterpiece, Atonement. With Saturday, McEwan has crafted perhaps his most unique achievement to date.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Madrid on 04-25-05
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Children Act
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Lindsay Duncan
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.
-
-
McEwan has written perfection in this novel.
- By Bonny on 09-17-14
By: Ian McEwan
-
Sweet Tooth
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of such prestigious honors as the Booker Prize and Whitbread Award, Ian McEwan is justifiably regarded as a modern master. Set in 1972, Sweet Tooth follows Cambridge student Serena Frome, whose intelligence and beauty land her a job with England's intelligence agency, MI5. In an attempt to monitor writers' politics, MI5 tasks Serena with infiltrating the literary circle of author Tom Healy. But soon matters of trust and identity subvert the operation.
-
-
Perfect Book for your Literary Sweet Tooth
- By Susianna on 11-18-12
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Innocent
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War-weary Berlin has much to offer Leonard Markham, a young, naive postal engineer: first the arts of sophisticated intrigue, then the delights of sexual pleasure. But Leonard's new knowledge carries a heavy price, dragging him and the listener into a new type of story that is exhaustively suspenseful and utterly irresistible.
-
-
A little gem
- By Geoffrey on 08-19-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Nutshell
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Rory Kinnear
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Atonement, Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour is just a speck in the universe of possible things?
-
-
The Long Version, and the Short.
- By Ilana on 09-19-16
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Comfort of Strangers
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan has won the Booker Prize, Whitbread Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his masterfully accomplished fiction. The Comfort of Strangers is an exquisitely crafted gothic novella. On holiday, Colin and Maria wander the ancient streets of Venice and frequently lose their way. When they are accosted by a man with a strange and alluring story to tell, they soon become entwined in a fantasy of violence and erotic obsession.
-
-
Mysterious, bizarre
- By EVERETT on 07-21-07
By: Ian McEwan
-
Saturday
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Ian McEwan's novels have inspired sweeping critical acclaim and won such prestigious awards as the Booker Prize for Amsterdam and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his modern masterpiece, Atonement. With Saturday, McEwan has crafted perhaps his most unique achievement to date.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Madrid on 04-25-05
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Children Act
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Lindsay Duncan
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.
-
-
McEwan has written perfection in this novel.
- By Bonny on 09-17-14
By: Ian McEwan
-
Sweet Tooth
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of such prestigious honors as the Booker Prize and Whitbread Award, Ian McEwan is justifiably regarded as a modern master. Set in 1972, Sweet Tooth follows Cambridge student Serena Frome, whose intelligence and beauty land her a job with England's intelligence agency, MI5. In an attempt to monitor writers' politics, MI5 tasks Serena with infiltrating the literary circle of author Tom Healy. But soon matters of trust and identity subvert the operation.
-
-
Perfect Book for your Literary Sweet Tooth
- By Susianna on 11-18-12
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Innocent
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: John Franklyn-Robbins
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War-weary Berlin has much to offer Leonard Markham, a young, naive postal engineer: first the arts of sophisticated intrigue, then the delights of sexual pleasure. But Leonard's new knowledge carries a heavy price, dragging him and the listener into a new type of story that is exhaustively suspenseful and utterly irresistible.
-
-
A little gem
- By Geoffrey on 08-19-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Machines Like Me
- A Novel
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he co-designs Adam's personality.
-
-
Very disappointed.
- By Tom on 05-25-19
By: Ian McEwan
-
Amsterdam
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.
-
-
Quick and engaging, well-read
- By Bronwen on 12-28-11
By: Ian McEwan
-
Enduring Love
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a sunny afternoon, the middle-aged writer Joe Rose and his wife look up from their picnic in the countryside to see an elderly man desperately trying to anchor his giant helium balloon. Running to help, Joe is joined by other bystanders. But from that fateful day, one of them, Jed Parry, will begin to stalk Joe. Driven by religious zeal and misdirected love, the strange young man will slowly unravel each strand of Joe's life.
-
-
Thriller of the minds and relationships
- By EVERETT on 12-28-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
First Love, Last Rites
- Stories
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.
-
-
Trash
- By Michael on 05-08-23
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Child in Time
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two parents come to appreciate the forces of love and time after the disappearance of their daughter, Kate.
-
-
Not McEwan's Best Effort
- By Charles on 06-07-09
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Cockroach
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Bill Nighy
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he is the most powerful man in Britain - and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way; not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy. In this bitingly funny Kafkaesque satire, Ian McEwan engages with scabrous humor a very recognizable political world and turns it on its head.
-
-
An excellent parody on life during Brexit
- By Kate Juliff on 11-28-19
By: Ian McEwan
-
Atonement
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Jill Tanner
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.
-
-
An amazing book about complex human perception
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-04
By: Ian McEwan
-
Amsterdam
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.
-
-
Make something, and die.
- By Darwin8u on 02-07-17
By: Ian McEwan
-
The Daydreamer
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 2 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Internationally best-selling author and Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan presents his first book for children, The Daydreamer. Peter Fortune is unlike most kids his age. In fact, he's different from everybody else in the world. Peter has the amazing ability to make his daydreams come true. A captivating narration from Simon Prebble brings McEwan's imaginative and adventurous story to vivid life for listeners of all ages.
-
-
Charming and Sweet!!!
- By Matthew S. Hill on 03-27-17
By: Ian McEwan