Sweet Tooth: Spies and Literature Collide

The holidays are a time to either catch up on your reading or make a resolution to read more in the New Year. So this week I'm offering recommendations of books that have entertained me in the past few weeks. First up, Ian McEwan's latest novel, Sweet Tooth. No two McEwan novels are alike and Sweet Tooth delves into yet another new genre - the spy novel. However, it's a spy story with a literary twist, one that becomes increasingly intriguing as the novel goes on.

Set in the 1970s, the story is told from the perspective of Serena Frome, a young woman who loves to read but is forced by her mother to study Mathematics instead of English at Cambridge. She graduates with a less than stellar degree in maths, but thanks to an affair with a professor, she is groomed for an interview with MI5 and obtains a low-level secretarial job with the Security Service. Here, her love for speed-reading novels puts her in prime position for a new program called "Sweet Tooth," through which MI5 hopes to secretly fund novelists that write capitalism-loving, communism-bashing literature that the government can use to vanquish Cold War propaganda. Serena is enlisted to liaise with one of the selected novelists, a man named Thomas Haley, but of course, the liaison quickly turns romantic and things get complicated.

The novel starts out with the promise of suspense but it isn't a true spy thriller. "Sweet Tooth" is a pretty tame program in the roster of secret government programs, and the novel's focus shifts to Thomas Haley's work and his writing process. Serena reads his short stories and we get tantalizing glimpses of weird tales that explore interesting gender dynamics. There are subtle clues scattered throughout his stories and Serena's reactions to reading them foreshadow how this story is going to end. All the while, Serena has to maintain her cover, but as she falls more in love with Haley, she needs to figure out whether it's time to come clean about her role in MI5.

The character of Thomas Haley is semi-autobiographical and various events and people mentioned in the book are taken from Ian McEwan's own life. That makes this novel interesting for any McEwan fan. But the truly intriguing aspect of this novel is revealed only when you read the final chapter. That's when the story gets untangled and laid out bare, or for some readers, even more twisted and bizarre. It's an ending that thoroughly appealed to me but had a decidedly mixed critical reception.

I'm of the opinion that any novel that generates heated discussion about its perceived merits or failings is a novel worth reading. Sweet Tooth is one of those rare books that demands to be re-read immediately upon completion. The more you read it, the more you come to appreciate the art of literary deception.