Betrayal certainly dooms the relationship between Serena and Tom, as well the relationship - built on an illusion, after all - between the reader and this novel itself. Tom's short stories all revolve around the themes of love, betrayal and fakery and, so, they explicitly comment on the larger tale this novel tells. Violating one of the cardinal rules of tradecraft, Serena falls in love with Tom, even as she's tormented by the fact that she's concealing her true identity as a secret agent.Īs he has in previous novels, like Atonement, McEwan revels here in breaking the "fourth wall" between his fictional world and our own: For instance, real-life Brit writers, living and dead, like Martin Amis and Ian Hamilton turn up in scenes and schmooze with Tom and Serena. Serena is dispatched to entice a fiction writer named Tom Haley into the operation, and, as preparation, she reads the short stories he's written, which McEwan himself, of course, concocts and scatters throughout this novel. MI5 wants to secretly fund fledgling writers and artists whose work it deems anti-communist in sympathy. She diligently files and smiles until the day that her expertise as a novel reader is called upon for a mission dubbed "Sweet Tooth."
After graduation, Serena moves into a damp bed-sit in London and enters the intelligence service at a time when the glass ceiling for women was ankle-high.
Certainly, as much as it is a suspense tale, a novel of ideas and a political meditation on the decline of Britain in the 1970s, Sweet Tooth is also a cynical novel about the art of fiction and its pointlessness in the larger scheme of things.Īs the story goes, beautiful Serena is recruited into MI5 by her lover at Cambridge, a history professor who is one of the many brilliant, narcissistic and essentially mean men whom she falls for. McEwan's title, Sweet Tooth, refers to both a clandestine operation Serena carries out and to the mind-candy lure of fiction itself. Then, by novel's end, McEwan ridicules us readers for ever believing in Serena and the fictional world he's blown breath into. McEwan deploys his great gifts of storytelling to draw readers into an intricate plot about Serena's career during the 1970s, working as a low-level operative for MI5, the British internal intelligence service. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Sweet Tooth Author Ian McEwan
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