Sweet Tooth (novel)

Last updated

Sweet Tooth
Sweet Tooth (novel).jpg
Cover of the United Kingdom first edition
Author Ian McEwan
Cover artist Chris Frazer Smith
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Jonathan Cape
Publication date
21 August 2012
Pages336 pages
ISBN 0224097377

Sweet Tooth is a novel by the English writer Ian McEwan, published on 21 August 2012. It deals with the experiences of its protagonist, Serena Frome, during the early 1970s. After graduating from Cambridge she is recruited by MI5, and becomes involved in a covert programme to combat communism by infiltrating the intellectual world. When she becomes romantically involved with her mark, complications ensue.

Contents

McEwan wanted to write a novel dealing with the social turmoil of the 1970s, and Sweet Tooth is to a large extent based on his own life. The story explores the relationship between artistic integrity and government propaganda, and addresses competing approaches to literature; the boundary between reality and fiction is tested throughout. The novel is dedicated to McEwan's late friend Christopher Hitchens. [1] [2] He is not referred to directly in the book, but he did play a part as the host of a real-life literary event fictionalised in the book, involving McEwan and Martin Amis, who does appear in the story. [2] Critical reception was mixed; some reviewers found the novel moving and poignant, while others saw it as weaker than much of McEwan's previous work.

Plot summary

The plot is set in early-1970s England. Serena Frome ("rhymes with plume"), the daughter of an Anglican bishop, shows a talent for mathematics and is admitted to the University of Cambridge. But she struggles academically, and graduates with a third. While at Cambridge she becomes romantically involved with Tony Canning, a professor, who before abruptly ending the affair secures a position for Serena with MI5. The job is low-level, but a more exciting opportunity appears when Serena is offered a chance to take part in a new covert programme codenamed "Sweet Tooth". To counter Communist propaganda during the Cold War, the agency wants to offer financial assistance to young writers, academics and journalists with an anti-Communist bent. Serena, who is an avid and quick reader of fiction, is given the task of vetting burgeoning writer Thomas Haley.

Serena is immediately taken by Haley's published short fiction. She travels to the University of Sussex, where he works, to offer him a stipend from the fictional Freedom International Foundation. Soon the two begin a romantic affair, but things gradually start to unravel. Serena discovers that Professor Canning (who, it turns out, broke off their affair only because he knew he was dying from cancer) was in fact a Soviet spy, and she was recruited because the agency wanted to keep tabs on Canning. Then, when Haley's first novel comes out, it is a great critical success, but its dystopian, anti-capitalist theme is not well received by the agency. Finally, his affair with Serena is exposed by the press, and the whole Sweet Tooth programme is threatened.

Serena fears that she has lost Haley's love forever, now he knows she has deceived him. Haley, however, had known about the programme for months, and instead of ending the affair, had decided to turn the story into a novel. The reader now discovers that the author of Sweet Tooth is in fact Haley, despite its being written from Serena's first-person perspective. As the novel ends, Haley asks Serena in a letter to marry him.

Autobiographical elements

Several reviewers have pointed out that the Thomas Haley character shares many traits and biographical details with the author. [3] [4] [5] Like Haley, McEwan studied at the University of Sussex (later also at the University of East Anglia), and not at one of the more prestigious Oxbridge universities. Haley's stories, summarised briefly in the novel, are in several cases strikingly similar to some of McEwan's earlier work. This goes particularly for Haley's dystopian début novel, which closely follows the plot of "Two Fragments", a short story from McEwan's 1978 In Between the Sheets . [1] The novel wins Haley the fictional Jane Austen Prize for Fiction, just as McEwan's debut First Love, Last Rites was rewarded with the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. [6] Several of McEwan's acquaintances from this period also make cameo appearances in the novel, including his friend Martin Amis, his first publisher Tom Maschler, and his mentor Ian Hamilton. [4]

McEwan has been open about the autobiographical elements in the book, and has called it "a muted and distorted autobiography" [7] and "a muted, or transmuted, memoir of myself as a young writer." [2] There are, however, significant differences between author and character. Haley is both an academic and a writer of fiction, while McEwan has been a professional author for his entire career. The intelligence agency plot is also completely fictional; there was never a scheme such as the one described in the book run by MI5. [1] As McEwan says himself, "unfortunately a beautiful woman never came into my room and offered me a stipend." [7]

Genre and style

I said I didn’t like tricks, I liked life as I knew it recreated on the page. He said it wasn’t possible to recreate life on the page without tricks.

 — Sweet Tooth, ch. 14

Sweet Tooth is a love story, a spy novel, and a book about literature itself. [5] Serena and her boyfriend Haley – she a well-read but uncritical lover of literature, he a highly accomplished writer and literary scholar – have different attitudes towards literature. Serena prefers a realist approach, where life in the book reflects real life. Haley on the other hand is of a more modernist school, and enjoys experimentation in his work. [1] McEwan plays with these differences, firstly by placing himself in the novel and blurring the line between author and character, and secondly by writing what appears to be a straight first-person narrative, only to distort this perception at the very end. [2]

Themes

McEwan had long wanted to write a novel about the 1970s, a formative period in his life he refers to as "the time of my life." [7] For the United Kingdom it was a turbulent period, with striking miners, energy crisis, escalation of the conflict over Northern Ireland, repeated states of emergency and several shifts of government. [2] It was also the period of the Cold War, when Western governments were trying to win the war of ideas against a highly radicalised intelligentsia. Operation Sweet Tooth is entirely fictional, but the story is inspired by the actual scandal affecting the conservative literary magazine Encounter , which in 1967 was revealed to have received covert funding from the CIA. [8] McEwan uses this back-story to explore the relationship between artist and government, and the need for literature to remain independent. According to McEwan, the problem was not the anti-Communist crusade itself, but the secrecy with which it was conducted. "All that's really required is that anything the state does in relation to the arts is laid on the table where we can see it." [1]

Critical reception

Julie Myerson of The Observer enjoyed the "Russian doll" of the novel's multiple layers, and its "keen emotional pull." Though she had certain misgivings, she felt that the last few pages answered all her questions and "moved [her] almost to tears." [9] Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times was taken by the stories within the story, and though they tended to "suck vivacity from the main narrative", she saw this as a device to illuminate the "different crafts of writing short stories and novels." [5] Benjamin Errett, writing for the National Post , pointed out how McEwan had blended spy fiction and literary criticism to a combination that was both exciting and intellectually stimulating. In reference to Serena and Tom's different literary preferences, he concluded that "[t]his novel is juicy enough to satisfy them both." [10]

Other reviewers were less enthusiastic. The Daily Telegraph 's Catherine Taylor found the protagonist "a little too credulous." She also found McEwan's "wilful narrative sadism" sadly missing from the work. [4] The review in The Economist was even more critical: referring to Sweet Tooth as "not Mr McEwan's finest book", the reviewer concluded that by the end, "it is hard to feel much of anything for these heroes, who are all notions and no depth." [11] James Lasdun of The Guardian found that there were "momentous political questions" raised in the earlier parts of the novel, which were not fully addressed by the end. Stylistically, Serena found herself caught in exactly the kind of narrative she disliked, but, asked Lasdun, "to what end?" [3] The ending of the book was especially polarising. Kellaway saw it as "a good excuse to go back to the beginning and read this rich and enjoyable novel all over again", [5] while another reviewer confessed that, though the ending "might be enough to send McEwan acolytes scurrying back through the novel to see how he did it ... it made me want to throw the book out the window." [12]

The statistical journal "Significance" analyses McEwan's representation of the famous mathematical conundrum: the Monty Hall Problem. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novella</span> Fictional prose narrative form

A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word novella derives from the Italian novella meaning a short story related to true facts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian McEwan</span> British novelist and screenwriter

Ian Russell McEwan is a British novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The Times featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 19 in its list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".

<i>The Spy Who Loved Me</i> (novel) James Bond novel by Ian Fleming

The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel and tenth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April 1962. It is the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as the only Bond novel told in the first person. Its narrator is a young Canadian woman, Viv Michel. Bond himself does not appear until two-thirds of the way through the book, arriving at precisely the right moment to save Viv from being raped and murdered by two criminals. Fleming wrote a prologue to the novel giving the character Viv credit as a co-author.

<i>The Children Act</i> (novel)

The Children Act is a novel by the English writer Ian McEwan. It was published on 2 September 2014. The title is a reference to the Children Act 1989, a UK Act of Parliament. The book has been compared to Charles Dickens's Bleak House, with its similar settings, and opening lines.

The University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course was founded by Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson in 1970. The M.A. has been regarded among the most prestigious in the United Kingdom.

<i>The Diamond Smugglers</i> Book by Ian Fleming

The Diamond Smugglers is a non-fiction work by Ian Fleming that was first published in 1957 in the United Kingdom and in 1958 in the United States. The book is based on two weeks of interviews Fleming undertook with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation (IDSO), which was headed by Sir Percy Sillitoe, the ex-chief of MI5 who worked for the diamond company De Beers.

<i>Saturday</i> (novel) 2005 novel by Ian McEwan

Saturday (2005) is a novel by Ian McEwan. It is set in Fitzrovia, central London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, as a large demonstration is taking place against the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of errands and pleasures, culminating in a family dinner in the evening. As he goes about his day, he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it; however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man.

<i>The Cement Garden</i> 1978 novel by Ian McEwan

The Cement Garden is a 1978 novel by Ian McEwan. It was adapted into a 1993 film of the same name by Andrew Birkin, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Andrew Robertson. The Cement Garden has had a positive reception since its original publication.

<i>Atonement</i> (novel) 2001 novel by Ian McEwan

Atonement is a 2001 British metafictional novel written by Ian McEwan. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Stock</span> British writer (born 1966)

Jon Stock is a British author and journalist.

<i>Black Dogs</i>

Black Dogs is a 1992 novel by the British author Ian McEwan. It concerns the aftermath of the Nazi era in Europe, and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s affected those who once saw Communism as a way forward for society. The main characters travel to France, where they encounter disturbing residues of Nazism still at large in the French countryside. Critical reception was polarized.

<i>The Child in Time</i> 1987 novel by Ian McEwan

The Child in Time (1987) is a novel by Ian McEwan. The story concerns Stephen, an author of children's books, and his wife, two years after the kidnapping of their three-year-old daughter Kate.

Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.

<i>The Innocent</i> (McEwan novel)

The Innocent is a 1990 novel by British writer Ian McEwan. It received positive reviews from book critics and is considered by some to be one of his best novels.

<i>The Comfort of Strangers</i> 1981 novel by Ian McEwan

The Comfort of Strangers is a 1981 novel by British writer Ian McEwan. It is his second novel, and is set in an unnamed city. Harold Pinter adapted it as a screenplay for a film directed by Paul Schrader in 1990, which starred Rupert Everett, Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren and Natasha Richardson. The film is set in Venice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ewan Morrison</span> Scottish author and screenwriter

Ewan Morrison is a Scottish author, cultural critic, director, and screenwriter. He has published eight novels and a collection of short stories, as of 2021. His novel Nina X won the Saltire Society Literary Award for Fiction Book of the Year 2019. Literary critic Stuart Kelly described Morrison as "the most fluent and intelligent writer of his generation here in Scotland".

<i>The Daydreamer</i> (novel)

The Daydreamer is a 1994 children's novel by British author Ian McEwan. Illustrated by Anthony Browne. The novel was first published by Jonathan Cape. It draws its plot directly from the Rankin/Bass movie, The Daydreamer (1966) in which a young boy daydreams and enters a world of Hans Christian Andersen stories. It is considered to be McEwan's first book for children, or second if taking into account the picture book Rose Blanche (1985). Critics praised McEwan's imagination, but noted that the book had high "sweetness-and-light levels".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mick Herron</span> British novelist

Mick Herron is a British mystery and thriller novelist. He is the author of the Slough House series, early novels of which have been adapted for the Slow Horses television series. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award for Dead Lions.

The 2012 Booker Prize for Fiction was awarded on 16 October 2012. A longlist of twelve titles was announced on 25 July, and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of six titles, announced on 11 September. The jury was chaired by Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, accompanied by literary critics Dinah Birch and Bharat Tandon, historian and biographer Amanda Foreman, and Dan Stevens, actor of Downton Abbey fame with a background English Literature studies. The jury was faced with the controversy of the 2011 jury, whose approach had been seen as overly populist. Whether or not as a response to this, the 2012 jury strongly emphasised the value of literary quality and linguistic innovation as criteria for inclusion.

<i>Split Tooth</i> 2018 novel by Canadian musician Tanya Tagaq

Split Tooth is a 2018 novel by Canadian musician Tanya Tagaq. Based in part on her own personal journals, the book tells the story of a young Inuk woman growing up in the Canadian Arctic in the 1970s.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Tonkin, Boyd (25 August 2012). "Ian McEwan: Why I'm revisiting the Seventies" . The Independent . Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Wallace, Arminta (25 August 2012). "The sweet taste of success". The Irish Times . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  3. 1 2 Lasdun, James (23 August 2012). "Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 Taylor, Catherine (28 August 2012). "Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan: review". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Kellaway, Lucy (17 August 2012). "The spy who loved me". Financial Times . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  6. ↑ "Somerset Maugham Past Winners". Society of Authors . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 Cooke, Rachel (19 August 2012). "Ian McEwan: 'I had the time of my life'". The Observer . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  8. ↑ Robinson, David (18 August 2012). "Interview: Ian McEwan, author". The Scotsman . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  9. ↑ Myerson, Julie (2 September 2012). "Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan – review". The Observer . Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  10. ↑ Errett, Benjamin. "Book Review: Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan". National Post . Archived from the original on 29 January 2013. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  11. ↑ "New British fiction: The writer and the spy". The Economist . 1 September 2012. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  12. ↑ "Review: Fiction: Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan". Irish Independent . 25 August 2012. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
  13. ↑ Stephanie Kovalchik (8 January 2013). "Ian McEwan sinks his Sweet Tooth into The Monty Hall Problem". Significance . Retrieved 18 December 2015.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.