The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. Britain is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism. Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5.
Serena is sent on a secret mission - Operation Sweet Tooth - which brings her into the world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.
Sweet Tooth is the latest novel from Booker-winner Ian McEwan. All the things we love about McEwan are in this book - strong character voice, a couple of clever twists and turns to keep things moving, an intellectual narrative and beautiful writing. I have to say, though, that something was missing for me. Unhelpfully I don't quite know what.
It's one of those books where there was nothing to stop me finishing it and when I came to the end I could say, 'yes, I enjoyed that' but did I love it? Not really. Perhaps if there had been a bit of a longer build up and less long on the Tom Haley thread? But then if that had happened, would that have prevented me from caring about what happened to Serena?
What I did really enjoy about this book was the intellectual side. McEwan's characters are very intelligent and so the conversations they share reflect that. If I were honest with myself, I'd probably struggle to keep up with them in some cases and I'm 99% sure I wouldn't be a good recruit for the secret services but I did like taking a back seat and watching Serena climb the academic ladder, learn all she could from Tony and I took a little pleasure in seeing her confound Tom Haley with intricate mathematical problems. And even though I'm sure McEwan took similar pleasure when it came to constructing his ending, I have to allow him that - I didn't quite see it coming (and that's not something I ever like to admit... hence the addition of the word 'quite' in that sentence...).
I couldn't help but compare this novel to Restless by William Boyd - a very different war but nevertheless an exploration of the British secret service against a fascinating backdrop of international secrets with a ballsy woman at the helm and both, of course, written by some of the country's most talented and successful writers. The other similarity, though, was the disappointment factor although, if I had to pick, I would say Sweet Tooth pipped Restless to the post as, to me, Serena appealed that little bit more than Ruth.
This book gets a 7/10 from me.
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