Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan Review

Set in 1970s England, Serena is a young Cambridge-educated mathematician recruited into MI5 and finds herself working as part of Operation Sweet Tooth. The op is to bankroll writers whose politics mirror those of the state - West/Capitalism good, East/Communism bad - in the hope that the fiction they produce will sway the minds of the populace. And then Serena falls for her writer target, Tom. Dawww! Love in a cold (war) climate indeed.

I know Ian McEwan is both a critically acclaimed and bestselling author but I’ve never really jibed with his books - too middle-class, too-comfortable, too… meh. But I do appreciate that he has range and writes different kinds of books - from murder mystery, to social commentary, sci-fi speculation, political satire, good old literary fiction pondering on the issues of the day, and, in the case of Sweet Tooth, Cold War spy thriller.

McEwan going for a John le Carre-type book? It sounded intriguing to me, and Serena’s voice drew me in instantly, so I was hooked. But, for all that, it becomes a rather bland, and disappointingly unexpected, romance novel, without really living up to the premise of spies, etc. It’s not a bad novel, it just wasn’t as good as it sounded like it was going to be.

The story is fast-moving and entertaining for much of the first half. It’s compelling to see how Serena gets the attention of MI5, through an older lover who was a former spy turned university teacher, and the machinations within that organisation. McEwan sets up interesting plot elements - was her former lover a double-agent working for the Soviets, why was her bestie suddenly dismissed from MI5? - that kept me turning the pages to see how they resolved.

Once we meet Tom Haley, Serena’s project for Sweet Tooth, McEwan summarises the various short stories Haley produces and most of them are pretty damn interesting to read about (although his sci-fi dystopian novella was godawful). And, as someone who’s very bookish, reading about Tom and Serena’s literary tastes and opinions was fun.

As weird and unlikely an op as Sweet Tooth sounds, a lot of strange things like this went on during the Cold War and McEwan lists the books that explore these in the acknowledgements, as well as mentioning other bizarre schemes that happened during WW2 like Operation Mincemeat.

And even if Sweet Tooth was a low level op, I was holding out for more dramatic stakes to emerge as the story developed - and was let down when they failed to appear. Once Tom and Serena become lovers, the story becomes a rather soppy and wearying romance story, complete with soap opera suspicions of infidelity, et al. that eroded my interest in the book until I was fairly ambivalent at the end and just wanted to get on with something else.

Although I will say that the ending is a somewhat clever one that reframes the entire book for the reader and explains why future Serena was occasionally inserting her voice into what was an historical story.

McEwan’s prose is accessible and, while parts of the novel were great (much of the first half) and others much less so (much of the second half), he always does just enough to keep the reader going with the story. Sweet Tooth is a pretty decent novel with some great espionage/literary stuff and let down by too much bland romance guff. It just wasn’t as brilliant and exciting as I’d hoped it would be, given the premise of Cold War secret ops and spies.