Sweet Tooth

Nov 29, 2012 Chuck rated it 4 of 5 stars

My dearest Tom,

Upon reading your letter, my first impulse was to burn the accompanying package, walk away, and be done with us forever. But, as you seem to have uncannily predicted, I've now spent a couple of days and nights in your flat, devouring your manuscript and sleeping in between the sheets, nicely ironed. Given that you were in Paris and out of reach, there was no possibility of my responding to you immediately, so I had the luxury of abandoning myself to an extended period of reflectio...more My dearest Tom,

Upon reading your letter, my first impulse was to burn the accompanying package, walk away, and be done with us forever. But, as you seem to have uncannily predicted, I've now spent a couple of days and nights in your flat, devouring your manuscript and sleeping in between the sheets, nicely ironed. Given that you were in Paris and out of reach, there was no possibility of my responding to you immediately, so I had the luxury of abandoning myself to an extended period of reflection. And to my surprise, my initial response underwent a complete turnabout. You are already finished with MI5, and I am about to be. In an odd and unexpected way, our deceptions -- now stripped bare -- have made it possible for us to be completely honest with one another, me for the very first time. It seems that there could hardly be a better foundation for a new beginning, especially given that our mutual attraction remains entirely intact.

As for the proposed jointly-authored "novel" (at least that’s how I interpreted your letter's penultimate sentence), I emphatically don't want any future of ours to be haunted by such a book, especially not one that bears either of our names as an author. At the same time, the manuscript is positively brilliant, most definitely not something to be consigned to the flames. I was, of course the author of my actions, but the written product is yours, not mine. Your ability to inhabit my mental space is simultaneously frightening and comforting. Even those parts of the manuscript that your letter describes as necessary inventions have the ring of complete verisimilitude. There are no lacunae that require filling in by me. What then shall become of this incredible labour of love?

Here is my suggestion. Had you not enlisted (unwittingly) in the Sweet Tooth project, its funding would most likely have gone to another highly promising but unknown writer named Ian McEwan. At this point, Sweet Tooth is obviously moribund if not quite yet deceased, but Ian is young and very much alive. Although some of his manuscripts have garnered a lot of favourable attention within the small group through which they been circulating, he has not yet managed to get any of his pieces into print. I suspect that this unfortunate state of affairs may reflect Ian’s choice of material; his characters tend to be deranged, and his plots often veer toward the macabre. So it's understandable that no publisher has been willing to take a chance on him. However, if he were to produce a mainstream novel that met with a good critical reception, he would then be positioned to place his other work before the large audience that he richly deserves. Your manuscript fits that condition perfectly, so why not make a gift of it to Ian? Doing so could prove to be both our salvation and his.

Ian and I have never actually met, but since we share a mutual acquaintance, an introduction of the two of you could easily be arranged. Given Ian’s formidable talent, he would surely be able to conjure up whatever alterations are necessary to make your work appear to be his own, and I have strong reasons to believe that he would both endorse and enjoy the subterfuge. Moreover, with the influence that you have acquired upon receiving the Austen, you could represent yourself to your own publisher as Ian's agent, and you would most certainly not be turned down. Our truth could become Ian's fiction; he might even win the Booker (and in a deliciously tangential way, so then would you). Another secret, yes, but this time we would be in on it together from the very start. And should the altered manuscript's plot be deemed too close to whatever facts remain publicly undisclosed about Sweet Tooth, its publication could be delayed until a more propitious moment arrived. Even if several decades were to elapse, the novel could still benefit Ian significantly; in that case, rather than launching his career, it might instead serve as a capstone piece (assuming that by then his other writing had somehow found an alternative route to recognition). With luck, you and I might even still be around to celebrate that outcome.

So, now there appear to be multiple proposals sitting here on your kitchen table, proposals concerned with both life and art. At this point I am unsure whether those two subjects can be separated at all. But that's something to discuss when you come to London.

With great anticipation,

Serena

P.S. I would attach only one condition to the release of your/Ian's novel. Should it ever find its way into the hands of an American publisher, there must be a contractual insistence that the original language remain unaltered. American copywriters are berks; they'll change "favour" to "favor" and "programme" to "program", while giving a pass to Cockney slang and idiosyncratic British idioms. Authors, whoever they are, should demand that their international readership not be patronised.
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Dec 04, 2012 Maciek rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: thriller-mystery-suspense, historical-fiction, read-in-2012

The American edition of Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan's latest novel, has a delightful cover - an image of a woman standing at a train station, looking over the tracks and into the distance. The image is in sepia, and the font in which the author and the title are printed have obviously been carefully prepared to resemble the classic paperback covers from the 70's. The effect is quite delightful and definitely works. It is also dedicated to the late Christopher Hitchens brought that fine man back to m...more The American edition of Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan's latest novel, has a delightful cover - an image of a woman standing at a train station, looking over the tracks and into the distance. The image is in sepia, and the font in which the author and the title are printed have obviously been carefully prepared to resemble the classic paperback covers from the 70's. The effect is quite delightful and definitely works. It is also dedicated to the late Christopher Hitchens brought that fine man back to my mind

The last novel by McEwan that I've read was The Innocent, which is a curious coincidence - both Sweet Tooth and The Innocent are set during the Cold War. The Innocent is an espionage drama set in West Berlin, where the western powers plan on digging a tunnel to to East Berlin to tap the phones to the Soviet High Command. It is centered around Leonard and Maria, an English agent and a German woman. The novel is quite engrossing and I prefer it to much of McEwan's later works, yet somehow it did not quite get the recognition that they did.

Sweet Tooth is narrated by Serena Frome (rhymes with Plume) and takes place in Britain of the 1970's. Serena is an avid (though hardly critical) reader, and though authorial machinations lands a job at the MI5. Since the world is divided by the Cold War, British government wants to fight the communist propaganda - by giving financial help to artists with an anti-communist bent, thereby influencing their will to create and relax the material worries. Of course, none of this is official and none of the artists - both inside and outside Britain - have any idea that they are being supported by the MI5 an it is crucial that they do not learn this. "Sweet Tooth" is the codename the MI5 gave Thomas Halley, a rising British writer, and Serena is employed to evaluate him and if he gains her approval to carry out the operation.

While McEwan is without a doubt an author known to write good prose, the novel falls a bit short in terms of storytelling - and at the same time it does not. The outcome is revealed at the beginning - it is no secret and is made clear right in the first sentence - and the main characters feel more like devices used by the author to discuss politics and the state of Britain at that particular point in time. Since both Serena and Thomas are passionate about literature - one a reader, the other a writer - their characters at times feel as if they serves as a device for the author to contrast two different viewpoints on certain issues, not two authentic human beings that interact with one another. The end I felt was satisfying but tied everything with a bow, and one feels that the novel would have worked better as a novella or even a short story. Yet, with all its flaws Sweet Tooth is a clever piece of work, which gives its author a way of protecting himself against these criticism. To reveal its secret would be to spoil it - so I included the spoiler material in its appropriate section.

(view spoiler)

Cold War fiction has never really been known for being packed with James Bonds (read any Le Carre with that old curmudgeon, George Smiley?) but dealt more with the internal affairs of agencies and individuals working for them, often involving a considerable deal of paper pushing. This novel will not bring much new into that canon, and will not challenge the estabilished masters of the theme - it is an interesting if not extraordinary work by one of Britain's major writers, bound to provoke different reactions. I was not overwhelmed but also not disappointed. Still, I wish that I found more in Sweet Tooth to enjoy - although well-written and planned out, it ultimately felt like a set of authorial shenanigans sput and put before the audience, with the spinner never completely disappearing behind a curtain.(less)

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Dec 11, 2012 Teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've read all of McEwan's short stories and novels, and it's only now that I can see why his endings bother some readers (including readers like his main character, Serena). And if you are a different, and certain, kind of reader (one unlike Serena) you will have criticisms of his narratorial voice, but at the end, McEwan has an answer for every single one of them -- from why Serena sounds the way she does to "those paddings of the backward glance" (quote from the book). He has anticipated them...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ian McEwan leaves me a little speechless, like an encounter with a movie star might, though I'm much more impressed by his writing ability and sense of what drives people, than I am by good looks and $20M a movie. (That said, I have met him and, for a gentleman of a certain age, he is quite attractive, and I dare say, not poor.) Each page of his books, and Sweet Tooth is no exception, makes me swoon a little. So, while parts of Sweet Tooth were a little lost on my dim bulb (I'll never fully gras...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: british-isles-theme-setting, mystery-crime-thriller, read-2013

The opening paragraph of Sweet Tooth reveals the story's end, which is a tidy way of compelling you, dear reader, to focus on the important parts - the middle and such. You know it ends badly, so you can't possibly be disappointed; therefore, don't worry about it.

But then you remember that you are reading Ian McEwan, master of unreliable narrators and oft-tricksy endings, and you wonder - am I being told the truth of the ending as it is, or the truth as the narrator would have me see it? And sud...more The opening paragraph of Sweet Tooth reveals the story's end, which is a tidy way of compelling you, dear reader, to focus on the important parts - the middle and such. You know it ends badly, so you can't possibly be disappointed; therefore, don't worry about it.

But then you remember that you are reading Ian McEwan, master of unreliable narrators and oft-tricksy endings, and you wonder - am I being told the truth of the ending as it is, or the truth as the narrator would have me see it? And suddenly you are on edge, tense, looking for clues. Oh, Ian, you clever, clever man.

The plot is playful: a young co-ed, Serene Frome (rhymes with Plume), flops a bit in her maths degree and flounders after graduating Cambridge in 1972. Although well-bred and well-read, Serena's ambitions are limited. But she is recruited, by way of an affair with a retread professor, into the secretarial pool of MI5. Seeing her pliability, borne of boredom and upper-middle class ease, her superiors envelope her in an undercover operation, code-named "Sweet Tooth." Sweet Tooth is a cultural op - its mission is to identify and promote British writers who demonstrate anti-Communist philosophies. The writers are led to believe a literary foundation is behind the generous financial support and their only responsibility is to write away, honing their brilliance. Serena's assignment is to recruit a young writer and English professor, Tom Haley, into the scheme. It's not such a difficult mission, as it's hard to imagine any struggling writer turning down a pot of cash from a well-known foundation which has just stroked his ego until he is as content as a cat with a bowl of cream. But Serena manages to muck things up royally, by falling in love with her target.

Sweet Tooth isn't really a Cold War cloaks and codes thriller, as much as its pretty and pretty vacant heroine would love it to be (she's a simple girl who just wants to have fun. Or, if she can't have that, she'd be happy curling up in her dreary bedsit with a novel - Jacqueline Susann is just as good, if not better than, Jane Austen, thank you very much). It's a slowly unraveling set piece, chock full of deceptive aplomb, in which everything turns to custard with surreal glee.

Unfortunately, there are all sorts of draggy parts in the middle. But don't you dare skim, because you'll miss the clues that'll catch you in a cross-double cross that I dare not spoil here. And lots of author self-indulgence, as McEwan weaves in snippets of his short stories and real life characters from his early career; it's a satirical rewriting of the author's own history. The short stories within the story are terrific and the spy agency-funded rise and hilariously ironic fall of a writer - based on a true story - is fascinating.

Hang out with the fact that Serena stops sounding like a young woman coming of age in the early 1970s and starts sounding the way a man would imagine a young woman would think and behave; McEwan is particularly adept at writing women and I couldn't quite accept a failure here (Blue's Clues!) File away as interesting asides, but let off the hook, the red herrings of the IRA and Russian double-agents and jilted MI5 bureaucrats. They won't get you anywhere. And sad is the case of Tony Canning, one of the most interesting subplots - the one that could have turned this book from writer's folly into legit thriller: his story dead-ends with nothing but a nosebleed to show for all the trouble.

I'm equivocating - I can't quite commit to saying that I think Sweet Tooth is a great book - I found it a bit too smug to buy a theme of the power of literature (as some reviews have claimed) - there was too much stifled laughter and indulgent sweet (tooth) ness for something so grand. It also wasn't that great of a thriller, which it doesn't pretend to be, (but again, other reviews have found a John Le Carre note that I can't carry). But it is terrifically entertaining - all plummy accents and witty repartee that make Americans swoon in equal measure for Downton Abbey and 007 - and McEwan's fine, fine writing is irresistible.

And then there is that Absolutely Fabulous ending.

Enjoy Sweet Tooth. Seriously. Don't read heaps into it, just enjoy the read. (less)

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Dec 13, 2012 Elaine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

What a disappointment -- the vivid passions that animate Atonement (even its "trick", which in retrospect seems too similar) have become cramped cleverness, just as, perhaps, the heroic World War II London of Atonement becomes the gray decline of the early 70s London of Sweet Tooth. To sum it up, I was very disappointed. There is a lot of erudition on show here -- about the Cold War, about the history of British intelligence, and especially, always, about books and literature. But to what end? E...more What a disappointment -- the vivid passions that animate Atonement (even its "trick", which in retrospect seems too similar) have become cramped cleverness, just as, perhaps, the heroic World War II London of Atonement becomes the gray decline of the early 70s London of Sweet Tooth. To sum it up, I was very disappointed. There is a lot of erudition on show here -- about the Cold War, about the history of British intelligence, and especially, always, about books and literature. But to what end? Even when you know exactly how the fix is in, and every belief you might still have in reading and narrative has been soundly mocked (just as its resolutely atheist dedicee, Chris Hitchens, might have mocked belief in other realms), your first reaction is not a salute to the wry mindgames McEwan is playing, or to the (still virtually unmatched) writerly artistry and skill with which he has brought you there, but a yawn, a "really?", a sigh of disappointment that all that adroit artistry has been deployed in much ado about nothing.

At the end of the day, this is not a "spy novel" at all (the spy part is so flimsy it almost can't bear the weight it's meant to carry -- you need to suspend disbelief (and even on McEwen's terms, it's important that you credit her work a little bit) to see what Serena's doing as undercover/spying/intelligence work/duplicitous at all). instead, it's a love story, but not a romantic one, for the simple reason that Serena isn't really very interesting. We learned at the end a little bit about why we see her the way we do, but as portrayed she isn't really any good at anything except being beautiful and getting very involved with various men (most of whom she meets in professional settings). She's a math major who is terrible at her math studies, she's a passionate reader who likes pulp fiction and women writers (really - McEwan throws in that she likes Drabble and Byatt in addition to romance novels - quite a dig given that she's such a bad reader), eschewing the intellectuals of the day (Gaddis, Borges) because she only likes books that reflect real life back to her. In short, she's a terrible reader, and that's much of the point of the book -- she misreads every situation she's in -- always thinking things are going on that aren't and missing what is actually going on. She intentionally(?) screws up her job which she has no aptitude for by developing not one but two on the job romantic entanglements. She's a pretty bad friend, an unempathetic sister and a fairly absent daughter. But she's super hot -- we're given to understand. All these traits are in service of McEwan's master plan -- but they don't make it much fun to spend 300-odd pages with her as our ostensible guide -- she's kind of a snooze.

As for the eventual hero of the piece, the most fun McEwan has all book is making up short stories for our fictional writer to have written -- twist endings and moral deviance -- lots of "clues" for the attentive reader (unlike Serena)to dig into. While is is fun in doses, the recaps and quotes of his writing drag after a bit.

In short, by the time it all ends, with more of a small firecracker than a big bang, you are mostly relieved to be finished.(less)

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Oct 20, 2012 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, all-time-favourites

In my review of On Chesil Beach, I commented that I hadn’t read any of McEwan’s work since being profoundly disturbed by The Child in Time when I read it in the late 1980s. On Chesil Beach made me realise that I wanted to read more McEwan. I was therefore interested in this novel as soon as I saw it on the “new releases” table in my local bookstore. I elected to listen to the audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson, as it was cheaper for me to acquire than the text version and I knew from past ex...more
In my review of On Chesil Beach, I commented that I hadn’t read any of McEwan’s work since being profoundly disturbed by The Child in Time when I read it in the late 1980s. On Chesil Beach made me realise that I wanted to read more McEwan. I was therefore interested in this novel as soon as I saw it on the “new releases” table in my local bookstore. I elected to listen to the audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson, as it was cheaper for me to acquire than the text version and I knew from past experience that whatever the novel was like, Stevenson’s narration would be superb.

Set in England in the early 1970s, the novel is a first person narrative which tells the story of Serena Frome, a naive young Cambridge graduate with a mediocre degree in mathematics, who is recruited to the British domestic intelligence service (MI5) through her lover, a middle-aged academic. Serena is a voracious, if not particularly careful, reader of fiction. She particularly likes social realist novels, containing a character with whom she can identify. Because of her familiarity with modern literary fiction, she is assigned to Operation Sweet Tooth, MI5’s excursion into the propaganda aspect of the Cold War. MI5 has decided to fund a number of writers identified as unsympathetic to Russia and to communism. The funds are channeled through a front organization and the writers are unaware of the ultimate source of the money and of their intended role as weapons in the war of ideas. Serena is assigned to recruit Tom Haley, a young writer who has published a number of short stories and who has written in support of writers in detention in the Eastern Bloc. Serena initially falls for Haley’s writing and they eventually fall in love, which puts her in a moral quandary. Does she tell Tom who she is and what she does, which would mean losing her job and losing his love? Does she say nothing and continue to deceive him?

There are lots of things I love about this novel. McEwan’s prose is elegant and accessible. He conveys the atmosphere in London in the early 1970s: strikes, energy cuts, IRA bombings, pub rock and dingy share houses in what was then down-at-heel and is now super-gentrified Camden. McEwan also conveys the sexism of office politics and the condescending attitude towards women in the workplace. Serena is an interesting character with a believable voice. I'm always impressed when a male novelist writes convincingly from a female point of view. She is sexy and beautiful, clever in some ways but totally clueless and lacking in insight, something of a snob and frequently irritating, but fundamentally decent and troubled by her conscience. For much of the novel I didn't like Serena very much, but I developed sympathy for her as the narrative progressed.

Tom Haley is also interesting, in part because McEwan gave the character much of his own background. Like McEwan, Tom is a University of Sussex graduate who wrote short stories before he wrote novels and a number of Tom’s short stories - which are summarised in the work and explained through Serena’s reaction to them - are stories actually written by McEwan. (I know this from reading an interview with McEwan in my local newspaper). In addition, McEwan’s editor becomes Tom’s editor and a number of other literary identities from McEwan’s life become part of Tom’s life. While Tom is attractive and likeable, when I realised just how much of McEwan’s life story he shared, it seemed excessive and somewhat self-indulgent. Once I’d finished the work, though, I felt that less strongly, although the feeling didn’t entirely disappear.

This is not an espionage novel, notwithstanding the plot. It’s a novel about the process of writing and the process of reading, about the control of the narrative in a novel and about relationship between writers and readers. It’s also about truth, deception and trust. These metafiction aspects of the work are what I love most of all.

From a slow start, McEwan builds up the tension and eventually the novel becomes a page-turner. In audiobook terms, it made for compulsive listening. As I listened, I knew that there’d be a twist at the end and I tried to work out what it might be. I was right about one aspect of the resolution – what in my view is probably its least plausible aspect – but I didn’t otherwise guess where McEwan was going. And for that, I am very grateful. Being taken by surprise made for a much more enjoyable literary experience. I found the work engaging and entertaining enough to be able to suspend disbelief.

Since finishing the book yesterday morning, I’ve read a number of reviews, written by both professional critics and other readers here on GR. Many of the more negative reviews express disappointment that the book is not as good as those works which the reviewers consider to be McEwan’s best. As someone who has read so little of McEwan’s writing, all I can say is that if this is not one of his better novels, then I have a lot of pleasure ahead me as I read those which are.

More than a day after finishing the audiobook, I’m still thinking about the writing and the characters. Generally that would lead to a five star rating. I remain of the view that the extent of the autobiographical material was self-indulgent (although it did heighten the sense of the work as metafiction), and that makes me inclined to knock off a star. On the other hand, Juliet Stevenson’s narration was so amazing (have I mentioned that I adore having her read to me?), that it deserves five stars all of its own. So 4.5 stars it is, at least for now. Until I decide which novel really is McEwan’s best work.
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Sep 28, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my third McEwan novel, so I am not veteran enough to compare elements of SWEET TOOTH to his large body of work, but a few aspects of his talent brought me back to ATONEMENT, which is one of my favorite British contemporary novels, and SOLAR, has last novel. ATONEMENT proved that McEwan pens female characters with finesse--even complex, conflicted girls like thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis. In SWEET TOOTH, he kicks the femme character up a notch by writing in the first-person perspective...more This is my third McEwan novel, so I am not veteran enough to compare elements of SWEET TOOTH to his large body of work, but a few aspects of his talent brought me back to ATONEMENT, which is one of my favorite British contemporary novels, and SOLAR, has last novel. ATONEMENT proved that McEwan pens female characters with finesse--even complex, conflicted girls like thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis. In SWEET TOOTH, he kicks the femme character up a notch by writing in the first-person perspective of a low-ranking spy in the early 1970s.

Serena Frome—rhymes with plume-- is an arresting woman in her 20’s, a graduate of Cambridge in maths, and a speed-reading lover of novels, especially character-driven ones. If I hadn’t known better, I would have believed that the author of SWEET TOOTH was a woman. He also provided, once again, an effective and scintillating finale, as did ATONEMENT and his satirical SOLAR. However, his narrative tone is unique here from the former two novels.

Serena, the daughter of an Anglican bishop, grew up in an insulated and well-tended atmosphere. Her mother wanted her to achieve success, and persuaded her to study maths at Cambridge, rather than her first love, literature. She was an average student in maths, while continuing to voraciously read novels, often skipping over descriptive paragraphs in order to get to the “character.”

“I didn’t bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes, and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in…I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn’t mind so much if they tried their hand at something else.”

And love was firmly in Serena’s mind, as events in the book will reflect. Serena was also solidly anti-communist; her nuanced political views were shaped, in part, by an older, scholarly boyfriend, Tony Canning. It was through Tony that she was led to a job at the M15 (British Intelligence Agency). It is better for readers to find out for themselves how this happens.

This is a delightful narrative, with a warm, cheeky, animated, but intimate voice—the prose seems so effortless, is so sleek and smooth, that the words funneled instantly into my ear, as if I were hearing them as my own thoughts. There isn’t one false note in this book. After I finished the story, I continued to eavesdrop on Serena (in my imagination), and can conjure her up now, a week later.

On the one hand, this is a spy story, and there are enough clandestine, stealthy zigs and zags and twists and turns to remind me of John Banville and John le Carré, two novelists whose spy stories are as much about the internal pressures and conflicts of being undercover as they are about the action-oriented details. SWEET TOOTH isn’t about the plot, although it is a superbly satisfying story. It is a bildungsroman about Serena, seeking her own path, looking for love and shedding her naïveté.

Many renowned authors write novels that include a character of their own name, (often as fictionalized memoirs) such as Coetzee, Philip Roth, and a multitude of others. McEwan didn’t write in his name, but I intuit that he gave a wink and a nod to his (auto)biographical past. I sensed that from the intense workout he gave to the act and art of writing, and critique, and of the ego of writers, blending it with story. He did what is otherwise known as metafiction. According to Wikipedia, metafiction is defined this way:

“also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion.”

How sublime for McEwan to do this—exposing the fictional illusion in a novel ostensibly about spy work--which certainly incorporates illusion and identity, or the illusion of identity (or the identity of illusion?).

Where did the title come from? Well, I am not at liberty to tell, or I might have to erase you first! Just open and indulge your gourmet sweet tooth. There are no empty calories here, though, just a supremely satisfying and mouth-watering feast of fiction. Isn’t that the truth!

This review is based on the UK edition.(less)

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Apr 21, 2013 Caris rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

“Fuck! It was dull, it was dead. I’d covered forty pages, as easily as counting. No resistance or difficulty or spring, no surprises, nothing rich or strange. No hum, no torque. Instead, everything I saw and heard and said and did was lined up like beans in a row. It wasn’t mere clumsy surface ineptitude. Buried deep in the concept was a flaw, and even that word sounded too good for what it was trying to name. It simply wasn’t interesting.”

I can’t remember ever having read a passage in a book th...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-fiction, europe-and-british-isles, miss-trees, spy-fiction

Rating = 3.5 stars

I have been frequently and frustratingly disappointed by Ian McEwan, so this was actually better than I expected. But I had to get all the way to the end before I felt like my time reading it was justified.

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Feb 11, 2013 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jenny by: Dale and Karen

Shelves: read2013

I really enjoyed this, and I don't always love McEwan. He has to try hard to impress me. But I suppose creating a female character who is a reader more than anything, and turning her into a secret agent - that can't get any closer, better than flowers and chocolates, you know?

The descriptions of Miss Serena Frome as a reader felt familiar.

"I've said I was fast....I could take in a block of text or a whole paragraph in one visual gulp. It was a matter of letting my eyes and thoughts go soft, like...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

Love and Deception and Love

“Sweet Tooth” is set in the first few years of the 1970’s at the height of the cold war. Serena, who is anything but serene, is attending Cambridge studying maths at her mother’s insistence. She earns a third, poor girl. She’d much rather be studying English Literature because all her life she’s devoured book after book searching for an ever more romantic ‘I do’. To her delight she has a few love affairs while at school and one of her beaux leads her to a job at MI5 up...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Princess rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-own-a-copy, published-recently

Impossible to write a comprehensive review of this book without giving away the ending. Impossible for me, at least. I have a single coherent thought at the moment (I closed the book only minutes ago); it comes from one of McEwan's characters: “There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honor. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consisten...more Impossible to write a comprehensive review of this book without giving away the ending. Impossible for me, at least. I have a single coherent thought at the moment (I closed the book only minutes ago); it comes from one of McEwan's characters: “There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honor. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.” These lines stuck with me when I first read them; I took a minute to highlight them in my favorite purple ink. Now, after closing the book, their importance has come back to taunt me. With his last chapter, McEwan violates the very reader-writer contract that he so brilliantly describes – really, I can see him smirking as he types up the words, halfway through the book, knowing full well what is coming at the end – and I am left feeling – in a word – ill-used. But it is a master stroke; Sweet Tooth has an ending that you do not see coming at all.

Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) is a twenty-something year old who works for MI5. She is given a low-level assignment – to recruit an author, whom the Security Service will fund. The plan is to influence public opinion by determining which books get read and which don’t. The operation is called Sweet Tooth.

Serena is beautiful, of course. She falls for the author she is assigned, of course. But this is where the plot ceases to be formulaic. Before Serena recruits the author, she must first read his work. We are treated to summaries of the author’s short stories – all of them published works of McEwan’s, neatly distilled into a few, quick paragraphs. We wonder, along with Serena, how much she can learn about the author from his work. I found these passages especially delightful, because I have wondered oftentimes what my stories say about me or what my favorite authors’ stories say about them. There is an extraordinary chapter on probability – extraordinary, for me, because I have a background in both Math and English, and when Serena and Tom (the author) begin to argue about probability, I can sympathize with both their logics (Serena’s that of a Mathematician; Tom’s that of a writer). It was a wonderful case of discovering a character(s) who could speak with my voice.

Several story lines run alongside each other in this book: romance, espionage, politics, literary stuff, etc. This is not by any means an easy book. But McEwan uses old tricks: Serena reminded me, occasionally, of Atonement’s narrator, Briony – at the beginning of the book, she is sixty or so and is merely recounting the experiences of her youth; the narrative is sprinkled with letters (this is the case, also, in Atonement); the book’s overarching theme has to do with writing; finally, the surprise twist at the end, that authorial sleight-of-hand, has echoes of Atonement’s ending all over it. I adored Atonement. Placed alongside it, Sweet Tooth falls short. The passages, for one, are not nearly as beautiful. However, judged on its own merit, Sweet Tooth is the work of a master. There are few writers who can get inside of a character’s mind or write as sparsely and precisely as McEwan. There are also very few writers who can scrutinize their own work so objectively (remember, Tom’s stories are actually McEwan’s early work, and Tom, himself, looks and sounds a lot like McEwan). In short, I was impressed by this book, but not completely blown away by it.

3.8 stars
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Nov 24, 2012 Bailey rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

If you want to read an Ian McEwan novel, choose a different one! McEwan has long been one of my favorite authors, but Sweet Tooth was hugely unsatisfying for me. I struggled to get through it; the plot dragged and the characters were both unbelievable and unlikable. It was well-written, but it lacked the emotional depth and psychological insight that to me is the mark of a great McEwan novel.

The book has been marketed as a "spy thriller," and you'll be especially disappointed if you start readi...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Stuart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ian McEwan is my favorite writer when it comes to style. There's something about the rhythm of his sentences that works for me. I thought he could write with aplomb in any genre until Solar came along and I found out McEwan definitely can't write satire. With Sweet Tooth, he's back on track. The novel isn't profound, but it is the most entertaining novel I've read this year by far.

Sweet Tooth is a story about a minor British spy scandal in the 1970s. A young woman, low on the M5 totem pole, is t...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Holly rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-reads

Just some open-ended thoughts. And spoilers, too, I suppose:

I wonder if one of the reasons Serena is such a weak, passive, shallow main character is because, despite the first-person POV, McEwan can't quite bring himself to inhabit her? He has diluted her by having another character write her/spy on her (whom McEwan himself is writing/spying on).

Note: In an interview promoting this book McEwan claimed that he has a prejudice against first-person narratives: "There are too many of them. They're t...more Just some open-ended thoughts. And spoilers, too, I suppose:

I wonder if one of the reasons Serena is such a weak, passive, shallow main character is because, despite the first-person POV, McEwan can't quite bring himself to inhabit her? He has diluted her by having another character write her/spy on her (whom McEwan himself is writing/spying on).

Note: In an interview promoting this book McEwan claimed that he has a prejudice against first-person narratives: "There are too many of them. They're too easy; it's just ventriloquism and authors can hide their terrible style behind characterisation. Any number of cliches are permitted."

So before I knew the "trick" (I didn't catch on early), I was rather pleased with myself for noticing that Serena's affairs took the shape and guise of a novel, and her insights and how she "read" the people around her were exactly how a vapid romantic heroine would unconsciously shape her life. (Like those people whose lives appear to be one drama after another, but dramas often of their own creation.) Serena says "All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form." - and that's what her life turns out to be like - so un-prosaic! But then, was I not duped myself, since it turned out Serena really WAS a fictional character within a fiction within a fiction . . . and so who is the bad reader? ... Because I'm vaguely disturbed by McEwan's apparent mocking of readers (the "basest of readers"), while at the same time allowing Serena to assume she's an ideal reader, one who is knowledgeable and well-read - because she reads fast and indiscriminately. I took some mean-spirited pleasure in reading his descriptions of a person who craves "a form of naive realism," who assumes she can gauge the quality of writing by the extent to which it aligns with her own impressions. I can't quite put my finger on just why, but it bothers me that McEwan is mocking a sort of reader that I'm sure I am not - I don't judge fiction that way - but ....? Wouldn't I consider myself an ideal reader of certain works? Don't I read too fast (albeit with discernment to spare)?

Check out Elaine G's review for some interesting insights: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... (less)

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Jan 07, 2013 Khaya rated it 4 of 5 stars

McEwan showed a great deal of potential with Atonement, but since then his books have been hit or miss with me. This one, thankfully, was a hit.

Serena, the heroine, is beautiful but thankfully not a Mary Sue -- her beauty is a plot device rather than author-reader-wish-fulfillment. Her power over the men around her is what gets her into the messes she finds herself in. An affair with a doting older man leads her to a job with the British Secret Service, which leads to a complicated relationship...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My second by Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth is vastly different in tone and subject matter from Atonement. Set in England primarily in the early 1970s, it combines elements of a traditional "spy story" with the memoir format, told in the voice of Serena Frome, a graduate of Cambridge who was pushed into maths despite her desire to study literature. Along the way, it raises questions about why writers write what they do, why readers read what they do, and the relationships between writers, readers, and...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Elyse rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just started reading "Sweet Tooth" this morning before getting out of bed...
My My, I can see I'm in for delightful *Ian McEwan* ride.....with his key narrator/female **Serena**.... an Professor 'Tony'.

I wasn't crazy about Ian's last book "Solar"....nor a fan of "Chesil Beach" ---but a huge fan of most other books he wrote. ---(his early books) --

So far-- "Sweet Tooth" has the 'feel' of what I love best about Ian McEwan ---
He knows woman -- He knows men -- He knows about relationships -- "Swe...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

The story starts off with the introduction of the main protagonist one lady of the name of Serena.
She chooses in this story to take up employment with the Mi5 the homeland secret service.
We start off by learning of her life, her family, lovers and outlook on the world of the 1970's.
The title of this Novel is the name for a new project/operation the Mi5 was embarking upon in the novel with Serena as the honey trap.
Serena is an avid reader and finds herself with the responsibility of being underco...more The story starts off with the introduction of the main protagonist one lady of the name of Serena.
She chooses in this story to take up employment with the Mi5 the homeland secret service.
We start off by learning of her life, her family, lovers and outlook on the world of the 1970's.
The title of this Novel is the name for a new project/operation the Mi5 was embarking upon in the novel with Serena as the honey trap.
Serena is an avid reader and finds herself with the responsibility of being undercover for Mi5 as an agent for a foundation looking to fund a new writer.
She is given the assignment of checking out and verifying if a writer called Tom Healey is a suitable recipient. Make contact and secure a deal with him that is all it should involve.
He lives in Brighton and so far has been doing journalistic work and writer of short-stories, they want him to write a first novel.
The M15 would hopefully want him to give two fingers up to USA in writing with content and views that the agency approves of. They cannot goad him into writing what they want, but hope if he is the right person he will somehow be of service and aid unknowingly the government.

This secret agent tale took an interesting turn here for me when she pursuits this writer. On starting reading this i was not sure how I was going to be hooked, I found this element did it for me one hour into reading.
This takes the story down the road of love and deception rather than an espionage or page turning 007 thriller, of which made the story a enjoyable read. A story set in the 1970's when the U.K had a different prime minister and the IRA where making headline news.
Ultimately Serena finds herself caught in a web of love and lies that makes great reading for the heart.

"That evening he plays with the children, cleans the hamsters cage with them, gets them into their pajamas, and reads to them three times over, once together, then to Jake on his own, then to Naomi. it is at times like these that his life makes sense. How soothing it is, the scent of clean bedlinen and minty toothpaste breath, and his children's eagerness to hear adventures of imaginary beings, and how touching, to watch the children's eyes grow heavy as they struggle to hang on to the priceless last minutes of their day, and finally fail."

"It was a pleasant break in routine to travel down to Brighton one unseasonably warm morning in mid-October, to cross the cavernous railway station and smell the salty air and hear the falling cries of herring gulls. I remembered the word from a summer Shakespeare production of Othello on the lawn at King's. A gull. Was i looking for a gull? Certainly not."

"If i was slightly nervous it was because in the past weeks i had become intimate with my own private version of Haley, i had read his thoughts on sex and deceit, pride and failure. We were on terms already and i knew they were about to be reformed or destroyed. Whatever he was in reality would be a surprise and probably a disappointment. As soon as we shook hands our intimacy would go into reverse. I had re-read all the journalism on the way down to Brighton. Unlike the fiction it was sensible, skeptical, rather schoolmasterish in tone, as if he'd supposed he was writing for ideological fools."

"I said, "Think it over a day or two, talk to a friend....Think it through."
He said,"The thing is..." and he trailed away. He looked down at his lap and he continued."It's this. Every day i think about this problem. I don't have anything bigger to think about. It keeps me awake at night. Always the same four steps. One, i want to write a novel. Two, I'm broke. Three, I've go to get a job. Four, the job will kill the writing. I can't see a way round it. There isn't one. Then a nice young woman knocks on my door and offers me a fat pension for nothing. It's to good to be true. I'm suspicious."

http://more2read.com/review/sweet-tooth-by-ian-mcewan/
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Jan 11, 2013 Bethan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: regular-fiction

I did genuinely enjoy reading this. McEwan writes in an easy to read, clear and entertaining style. Moreover, the novel was clever. It's a novel set during the Cold War era and follows a beautiful Cambridge graduate, Serena Frome, who works for MI5 in a lowly clerical type of position. Much of the plot is about her relationships with men and about literature (Serena got a third in maths but loves literature and becomes involved with it through her work). There are stories within stories. It's ha...more I did genuinely enjoy reading this. McEwan writes in an easy to read, clear and entertaining style. Moreover, the novel was clever. It's a novel set during the Cold War era and follows a beautiful Cambridge graduate, Serena Frome, who works for MI5 in a lowly clerical type of position. Much of the plot is about her relationships with men and about literature (Serena got a third in maths but loves literature and becomes involved with it through her work). There are stories within stories. It's hard to explain but is quite interesting and clever. McEwan name drops lots of writers and also covers the political situations of the time but always lightly and never ponderously.

So why did I not give it five stars or even four. My problem with it was that it was quite privileged and self-satisfied. It is a world and lives that I don't personally recognise and cannot relate to. After analysing it, I think it's because McEwan is not good at conveying the sufferings that people have, which would make for a deeper and more profound novel. This literature is more about escaping into pleasant fantasy, perhaps. McEwan puts in mentions of relatives or people who have bad life situations, like Serena's boyfriend Tom's alcoholic sister who has lost custody of her children and one child even is missing a foot from an accident. However, these feel very much like transparent literary devices that are two-dimensional and corollary to the privileged lives of the main characters: on the outside, in other words.

That is not to say that a novel has to be about people with awful lives to be deep, for privileged people themselves often have areas of personal sufferings, flaws and frustrations. The thing is that I don't think McEwan is good at conveying any of that. Perhaps he avoids it and it is true for him, but it doesn't feel real to me. So, while McEwan is quite good at setting the scenes of London, MI5 and the well-off English countryside, his novel lacks psychological verisimilitude that comes with the grittiness of reality, the ups and downs, flows and ebbs of passions, attachments and emotions. McEwan's treatment is very mechanical, somewhat simple and detached, to be honest. And that is why McEwan cannot be a great novelist, however fine a novelist he otherwise is.

Also, I hated the long letter at the end. It was boring and while the last two sentences were good, it was unsatisfying and felt smugly cliché. But don't get me wrong because I would definitely recommend the novel from an entertainment point of view (see the first paragraph).

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Nov 01, 2012 Shirley Schwartz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ian McEwan is an extraordinary author. His characterizations and his writing cadence are extraodinary. This book was really not what I expected. I was expecting a spy thriller book with earth-shattering and catastrophic segments. There is nothing life-threatening or dangerous about this book even though the element of surprise and the fear of the unexpected are both there for the reader. I have to admit that Serena Frome was probably one of the most unlikeable protagonists that I've ever read. S...more

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Jan 05, 2013 L. Lawson rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

I hovered between a 2 1/2 and 3 star review here and ultimately knocked it up a notch simply because the final chapter salvaged some of the loathing I had for this book and turned it into an 'okay' feeling. The main character is female...but not really. She's really just a player in someone else's game. She has little agency, and she's written in a way that makes you question if the writer knows how to write women at all. She falls in love with nearly every man she meets and can think of little...more

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Dec 01, 2012 Andrew Kunka rated it 3 of 5 stars

The payoff for this book is in the ending, where the reader is forced to re-evaluate the entire book in the final pages. That being said, I don't know if the ending made the rest of the novel successful. I appreciated the novel's themes about reading and fiction-making entwined in the world of some very low-level spies in the early 70s. I also enjoyed the metafictional nods to real authors and literary events of the period, especially the off-stage appearance of Martin Amis at a reading of The...more

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Dec 24, 2012 RH Walters rated it 3 of 5 stars

Here's how I think this book got written. One day Ian McEwan saw the latest movie version of Soldier Sailor Tinker Spy, became flooded with nostalgia for the 70s, headed to the library, and wrote a story about a sexy young spy who falls in love with a writer, which we discover later through one of McEwan's meta tricks, is a narcissistic exploration of what it is to be a writer. It's fun and clever, but the twist made my heart drop out of the story. The first part of the book was rapturous for me...more

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Dec 09, 2012 J. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: coldwar, secret-agent-man

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

"...we'll probably go on talking to Lyalin until the end of his life. There are always loose ends, things in the past, old stories with a new angle, procedural stuff, structures, order of battle and so on. There was one particular minor mystery, a cryptonym no one could crack because the information was too vague..."

There's no good way to discuss this without reference to at least part of the outcome; even more tricky is that what's going on doesn't really work very smoothly. We have a first-pe...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Jennifer D. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-books, books-i-own

the book started out really well for me and i was sucked right into the story. the book is dedicated to christopher hitchens. it's meta-fiction - many authors and books, as well as a book award (the austen prize, which is "better than the newly founded booker") feature on the pages of this novel. but...around the halfway/two-thirds mark...it got a bit...boring. which was disappointing - given the book also features mi5, spyishness and a bit of mystery. it could have been snap, crackle, pop-a-lop...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Nicole rated it 5 of 5 stars

McEwen writes beautifully and he takes a lot of time building up Serena and giving a good idea of what goes on in her head, and includes long and detailed synopses of what she reads and how she reacts to the material. You understand how her thinking is shaped and why she acts as she does, how her beauty and intelligence affects the way she is viewed and treated, and how ultimately it influences her views of her own value and capabilities. There are clever turns in this novel (read carefully!) an...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Jennifer creelman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fall-2012

I get so sad when I come to the end of an Ian McEwan novel. i am confused by the so-so reviews he received in the NYTimes??? The writing is so effortless, and all his words so well chosen from solipsism to clitoris. I loved the London backdrop of the story, I loved Tom Haley (of course he is a version of Ian McEwan), and in particular I loved the references to John Fowles, A.S. Byatt, Jane Austen, and Martin Amis. It felt as though all four of the authors contributed to this book, and that is wh...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Emily Crowe rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish

Started this book over breakfast, after hearing raves about it from my coworkers, Nieves and Caitlin. Off to a great start so far, and I'm far more engaged with this compared to the last McEwen books I've tried to read. Maybe this one will be the first that I actually finish!

Well, as it turns out, I did not finish this one. I thought McEwan's writing was fantastic but around the middle of the book my interest started to drift and I ended up giving up on the book. It started to feel more like a c...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Marmite ending? Did you love it or hate it?	25	252	May 20, 2013 07:28am
The Lost Entwife ...: Week 4: March 25-31	3	5	Apr 02, 2013 04:54pm
The Lost Entwife ...: Week 3: March 18-24	4	4	Apr 02, 2013 04:51pm
The Ending	4	70	Apr 01, 2013 06:54pm
The Lost Entwife ...: Week 2: March 11-17	2	3	Mar 15, 2013 02:07am
The Lost Entwife ...: Week 1: March 4-10	3	6	Mar 06, 2013 06:23am

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