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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
Slow & tedious at first, but totally pays off in the ending.
Ian McEwan has done incredible justice to his readers with his latest novel “Sweet Tooth,” the compelling story of Serena Froome, MI5. “Sweet Tooth” showcases her brief, yet significant career in the intelligence service and is possibly the greatest novel I have read this year.
“Sweet Tooth” is the code name of Serena Froome’s first mission with the MI5. It involves funding and recruiting budding writers under the façade of an “arts fund” to manipulate and deter pro-communist publications in the Cold War England of 1972. Occasionally, since finishing this book, I wonder if, like these writers; I too have been manipulated by McEwan with my predisposition for a happy ending.
In true McEwan style, the distinction between fiction and reality is blurred. He writes about writing, in an intelligent, never heavy-handed way.
However, is it the vibrant, tangible characters that made this novel so brilliant. Each chapter ending coincides with the days end, and at this pace, most nights I was content to place Serene Froome and Tom Haley upon my bedside table, and sleep, just as the characters were. This (unintentional ritual meant I lived and breathed with McEwan’s characters. When the novel finally came to a close, I felt a deep sense of loss and longing to be back in Serena Froome’s life.
“Sweet Tooth” was nectar for my imagination. Without realising it prior, this was the book I’d been waiting to read all year. All those dissuaded by “Solar” I promise you will not be let down again, because, dare I say it; “Sweet Tooth” is a masterpiece.
“Sweet Tooth” is the code name of Serena Froome’s first mission with the MI5. It involves funding and recruiting budding writers under the façade of an “arts fund” to manipulate and deter pro-communist publications in the Cold War England of 1972. Occasionally, since finishing this book, I wonder if, like these writers; I too have been manipulated by McEwan with my predisposition for a happy ending.
In true McEwan style, the distinction between fiction and reality is blurred. He writes about writing, in an intelligent, never heavy-handed way.
However, is it the vibrant, tangible characters that made this novel so brilliant. Each chapter ending coincides with the days end, and at this pace, most nights I was content to place Serene Froome and Tom Haley upon my bedside table, and sleep, just as the characters were. This (unintentional ritual meant I lived and breathed with McEwan’s characters. When the novel finally came to a close, I felt a deep sense of loss and longing to be back in Serena Froome’s life.
“Sweet Tooth” was nectar for my imagination. Without realising it prior, this was the book I’d been waiting to read all year. All those dissuaded by “Solar” I promise you will not be let down again, because, dare I say it; “Sweet Tooth” is a masterpiece.
I can't decide if his boring middle was intentional brilliant art, given his secret, or if it was just shoddy writing. But, ultimately I went three instead of four because whichever is the case, I still had to suffer through it.
I should just copy and paste my review of [b:smilla's sense of snow|124509|Smilla's Sense of Snow|Peter Høeg|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320477208s/124509.jpg|2607049]. The first half or so was great, and then it went all weird and tricksy.
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!) and a lot of discussion on how stories are created and told, and the different kinds of writers and readers. I have heard grumblings that Sweet Tooth is highly autobiographical, and not his best work. This is my first McEwen novel, so I really can’t comment, but if this isn’t his best, then bring on the rest! Highly recommended.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
McEwan is rarely boring, and his prose is always polished, perfect. Sweet Tooth is interesting, in many ways it's classic McEwan (think Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach), but it also feels different. It doesn't feel quite as cold, and its ending, while typical McEwan in one way, is also a bit less twisty and a bit more hopeful. I liked that, it reminded me that McEwan is still capable of surprises, he isn't one note. Also, anything about MI5 or British intelligence is intriguing to me. It also feels like a very personal novel, with its focus on readers and writers.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give this book 2 stars or 4. Had the feelings of 4, 4 it got! Wow. Where do I begin?
I battled through the first 100 or so pages of Serena’s younger years. It was pretty mundane and boring. I even thought of giving up. I am a huge fan of McEwan’s work so I decided to battle on.
I’m glad that I did.
As things begin to fall apart for the leading lady my interest picked up.
McEwan is known for his whammy of last chapters in his novels and this one had left me feeling very different about the book in its entirety. I now understood why the first 100 pages felt slow and I sat there thinking ‘cor blimey, I knew something was coming, but I didn’t think it would be that’.
The last chapter will make this book memorable. I feel a great sense of shame that the McEwan magic only comes in the last 20 pages. Too little too late?
Maybe I should change my review back to a 2 star...nah, I’ll keep it at 4.
I guess this will be a book to divide people and to divide the thoughts inside one person!
I battled through the first 100 or so pages of Serena’s younger years. It was pretty mundane and boring. I even thought of giving up. I am a huge fan of McEwan’s work so I decided to battle on.
I’m glad that I did.
As things begin to fall apart for the leading lady my interest picked up.
McEwan is known for his whammy of last chapters in his novels and this one had left me feeling very different about the book in its entirety. I now understood why the first 100 pages felt slow and I sat there thinking ‘cor blimey, I knew something was coming, but I didn’t think it would be that’.
The last chapter will make this book memorable. I feel a great sense of shame that the McEwan magic only comes in the last 20 pages. Too little too late?
Maybe I should change my review back to a 2 star...nah, I’ll keep it at 4.
I guess this will be a book to divide people and to divide the thoughts inside one person!
A very satisfying "five-finger exercise" (as one character calls a bit of writing in the novel), but it lacks the urgency and edginess that mark McEwan's best fiction. The reasons for this are themselves quite fascinating, but nonetheless disappointing.
It is probably quite difficult at this point to make the spy games of the late Cold War seem vital and interesting in large part because in popular (and often scholarly) imagination the 1970s, especially the early 1970s, remains held in a sort of enervated pause, swathed in drably nostalgic indifference. That is the general environment, and the more specific espionage angle reinforces it strongly. There is an explicit argument in the novel (it also is made in the recent adaptation of Tinker, Tailor) that the stakes of the Cold War have, by 1972/1973 (the setting of the novel) been removed, and what is left is pure bureaucratic inertia. McEwan tries to leaven this stagnation with little draughts of the Troubles, but one character near the end (not giving anything away, though) remarks quite aptly: "He said I had to understand, any institution, any organization eventually becomes a dominion, self-contained, competitive, driven by its own logic and bent on survival and on extending its territory. It was as inexorable and blind as a chemical process."
This understanding of bureaucracy cannot, I believe, make for good fiction, at least not if the author's brief is to draw out the conclusions of such a view. Presenting merely the listless grappling of forces already in existence delivers no sense of depth or complexity, much less immediacy or novelty, things necessary for a truly compelling novel. McEwan gestures toward new forces--feminism, gay life and culture, terrorism--but these are ornaments rather than structural elements in the story, and their interjection makes little difference, ultimately, to the novel's primary concern, which is narrative and the craft of fiction.
In many ways this is a forthrightly reactionary novel, convinced that it can both reject the metafictional flourishes of the 1970s heyday of the postmodern novel (named in its pages are Gaddis, García Marquéz, Pynchon, Ballard, and Barth) yet still outbid them in cleverness and conceit (in both the sense of a literary device and of a state of excessive self-regard). It slots neatly in next to many of the products of what Nick Dames referred to as the "Theory Generation" (http://nplusonemag.com/the-theory-generation), writers who find a good portion of their métier in the ambivalent space between acknowledging that Theory forever changed the novel and wishing to let that ineluctable knowledge lapse from time to time.
As I said, if a novel is going to be rather languid and unenthusiastic, it is best to be so for interesting reasons, and drawing those out of this novel, while not much of a challenge, is quite enjoyable on its own.
It is probably quite difficult at this point to make the spy games of the late Cold War seem vital and interesting in large part because in popular (and often scholarly) imagination the 1970s, especially the early 1970s, remains held in a sort of enervated pause, swathed in drably nostalgic indifference. That is the general environment, and the more specific espionage angle reinforces it strongly. There is an explicit argument in the novel (it also is made in the recent adaptation of Tinker, Tailor) that the stakes of the Cold War have, by 1972/1973 (the setting of the novel) been removed, and what is left is pure bureaucratic inertia. McEwan tries to leaven this stagnation with little draughts of the Troubles, but one character near the end (not giving anything away, though) remarks quite aptly: "He said I had to understand, any institution, any organization eventually becomes a dominion, self-contained, competitive, driven by its own logic and bent on survival and on extending its territory. It was as inexorable and blind as a chemical process."
This understanding of bureaucracy cannot, I believe, make for good fiction, at least not if the author's brief is to draw out the conclusions of such a view. Presenting merely the listless grappling of forces already in existence delivers no sense of depth or complexity, much less immediacy or novelty, things necessary for a truly compelling novel. McEwan gestures toward new forces--feminism, gay life and culture, terrorism--but these are ornaments rather than structural elements in the story, and their interjection makes little difference, ultimately, to the novel's primary concern, which is narrative and the craft of fiction.
In many ways this is a forthrightly reactionary novel, convinced that it can both reject the metafictional flourishes of the 1970s heyday of the postmodern novel (named in its pages are Gaddis, García Marquéz, Pynchon, Ballard, and Barth) yet still outbid them in cleverness and conceit (in both the sense of a literary device and of a state of excessive self-regard). It slots neatly in next to many of the products of what Nick Dames referred to as the "Theory Generation" (http://nplusonemag.com/the-theory-generation), writers who find a good portion of their métier in the ambivalent space between acknowledging that Theory forever changed the novel and wishing to let that ineluctable knowledge lapse from time to time.
As I said, if a novel is going to be rather languid and unenthusiastic, it is best to be so for interesting reasons, and drawing those out of this novel, while not much of a challenge, is quite enjoyable on its own.
characters: Serena Frome, Jeremy, Tony Canning, Max Greaterex, Tom Haley
I was annoyed and critical of this book until the end reveal, and then conveniently (for McEwan) most of my criticisms were rather easily explained away by his metafictional con. I still found Serena annoying and her emotional reactions not always spot on. And the endless discussion of the political machinations of the day bored me to tears, but overall it was a cleverly constructed book, and the last third was a real page-turner.
I was annoyed and critical of this book until the end reveal, and then conveniently (for McEwan) most of my criticisms were rather easily explained away by his metafictional con. I still found Serena annoying and her emotional reactions not always spot on. And the endless discussion of the political machinations of the day bored me to tears, but overall it was a cleverly constructed book, and the last third was a real page-turner.