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Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (view source)
Revision as of 10:30, 3 September 2012
, 10:30, 3 September 2012no edit summary
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|by Ian McEwan|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|by Ian McEwan|Enduring Love]], and [[Atonement|by Ian McEwan|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|by Martin Amis|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.