style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">Ian McEwan writes good beginnings. There is the hot-air balloon in Enduring Love (1997), and the grief-wracked father looking for his missing daughter in The Child in Time (1987). McEwan’s last book, Solar (2010), also gets off to a rollicking start when its protagonist, a scientist and dedicated womaniser, finds his fifth wife having it off with the builder.