Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth is part spy novel but more a love story and a tale of deception and half truths. It's also, more subtly, a book about the power, role and importance of fiction. Set in the 1970s, with frequent musical and political references to the UK at that time, Serena Frome is a beautiful, Cambridge-educated daughter of an Anglican bishop with a taste for unsuitable romances. From an early affair with a man who turns out to be homosexual, to an affair with an older lecturer she moves on to a surprise job at MI5 where she had a crush on one of her bosses, again and awkward, repressed and unattractive individual before encountering talented author Tom Haley as part of her job with whom she once again falls in love. Few of these men are what they seem, and neither for that matter is Serena when she has to hide her job from Haley.
| Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan | |
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| Category: Literary Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Robin Leggett
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| Summary: 1970s set love story where no one can be trusted to tell the truth. Starts off slowly for a McEwan novel but don't judge this until you read the final brilliant chapter. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 336 | Date: August 2012 |
| Publisher: Jonathan Cape | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9780224097376 | |
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If the term spy novel conjures up images of international espionage and derring do in your mind, you might be disappointed. This is very soft Cold War cultural espionage and the spy element goes little further than a covert operation that allows people to not be as they seem. It's probably a lot closer to the truth than the more fantastical MI6-based novels though to be fair. However, it's probably better to think of this more as a love story with dark twists.
McEwan usually hits his stories at a run and presents a major event early in the piece that signals things going wrong, often with quite a grand disclosure. Sweet Tooth is much slower to get going. Having said that, there were many who were disappointed with his last novel Solar and while I didn't share that criticism, this is more conventionally what you might think of from McEwan. It might not rank amongst his exceptional mid career oeuvre of Black Dogs, Enduring Love, and Atonement but the exquisite ending ensures that this is something like a return to McEwan at his best.
Like his contemporary, Martin Amis's recent Lionel Asbo, there's a sense that McEwan is having more fun with his writing now. There's more than a hint of the young McEwan in Tom Haley. Like the young McEwan, Haley is known for his macabre short stories and also like McEwan tells of a Haley having to give a talk after Martin Amis has brought the house down before him. There is also a lot of in jokes about the whole literary prize idea and in particular the then new Booker prize. In Sweet Tooth the idea is that MI5 promote a writer who expounds views that are suitably anti-communist, leading one character to observe that one day MI5 will be in charge of the prize as of course Stella Rimington, was, albeit after her MI5 career was over. It's a throwaway line but indicates a writer having some fun. McEwan also gently promotes the new universities, which of course was where he honed his craft, in contrast to the old world order of the Oxbridge set.
It's a book that is best not judged until the very end. If you'd asked me two thirds of the way through the book what I thought, I'd have responded that it was good, but perhaps not his best. But having read the critical final chapter, it's a book that will leave you smiling and thinking 'you clever, clever man, Mr McEwan'. All the threads are brought together superbly and poignantly.
Just perhaps there's an element of cliché of the beautiful girl falling for the struggling writer, and there's one small element concerning security and Serena's lack of cover story that doesn't quite ring true - she tells her flat mates, believably, that she is a civil servant and then has Haley, to whom she tells a different story, visiting the flat exposing a risk of exposure that Serena doesn't even see coming. However, in all other respects this is a another hugely enjoyable outing for McEwan and one that probably reveals more than literary prize bodies are comfortable with about the whole publishing process. As long as you don't equate spy with action, then this is definitely worth a read.
Our grateful thanks to the kind people at Jonathan Cape for sending us this book.
The 1970s are very much in fashion for writers at the moment. For more '70s espionage check out The Girl in Berlin by Elizabeth Wilson while The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty is hugely evocative of the period in Ireland at the time. Dig out those flares and enjoy. Please remember The Bookbag cannot be held responsible for any fashion faux pas that may arise from this advice.
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