Enrique Vila Matas and Ian McEwan

Enrique Vila Matas and Ian McEwan's latest books – "Dublinesca" and "Solar" – are a joy to read. Both are stream of consciousness novels about men reaching 60. Vila Matas impersonates a retired editor from Barcelona, Samuel Ribas, who goes to Dublin to fulfill a literary fantasy, whereas Ian McEwan slides into the skin of Michael Beard, a womanizing London physicist who glides along on the strength of a Nobel prize won many years ago. Both books are suffused by a light dark humor – the kind that makes a smile hover permanently on your lips as you read – as they depict the disabused cogitations and fantasies of successful males as they watch their powers wane. Ian McEwan is a classic novelist - he tells a straight story with unmatchable fluency in an impeccable style– whereas Vila Matas is perhaps more modern, allowing himself to meander in a forest of literary allusions. In their different ways, however, both Vila Matas and McEwan are able to do something which is always deeply alluring in a novel: enter the mind of characters who are alive now, who think present day thoughts, play with present time toys, and carry on in the cities in which we live in.