there's laugh-out-loud, but you can't float free

Ian McEwan's most recent novel, Solar, which features climate change as a major theme, is now out in paperback. In his review at the weekend Nicholas Lezard suggests that a comedy on this subject isn't possible:


It has many laugh-out-loud moments and turns of phrase; it has a darkly comic thrust; but, because deep down it really is concerned about climate change, it can't float free of the world as comedy can.


See also are they reading the same book?