In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan’s first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction.
Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England’s legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named “Sweet Tooth.”
Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.
Once again, Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.
Sweet Tooth: A Novel
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Book Description
Best Value
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: One of McEwan's finest female characters, Serena Frome--"rhymes with plume," the author tells us in the opening line--is both clever and beautiful, a speed-reading lit geek and a math whiz, a 1970s version of the Harvard MBA types who launch life-changing Internet startups. But in the dark and troubled Cold War days in London, there were few options for bright young women. So when a mysterious lover recruits her for the British intelligence service, MI5, Serena throws herself body and soul into an undercover operation code-named Sweet Tooth. What unfolds is a mystery, a romance, and a dazzling display of literary workmanship. Though the action slows to a crawl at times, McEwan is a brilliant and entertaining storyteller whose lines--sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes wickedly wise--had me reaching for my highlighter. --Neal Thompson
Review
Praise for Sweet Tooth:
"McEwan's most stylish and personal book to date ... The year's most intensely enjoyable novel."
—The Daily Beast
"A tightly crafted, exquisitely executed page-turner — a post-modern hall of mirrors asking savvy questions about identity, all concealed in the immersive trappings of a Victorian novel complete with a marriage plot. There's such rich pleasure and vulnerability in McEwan's storytelling, such style and heart in his well-honed sentences."
—USA Today
"Ian McEwan’s delicious new novel provides all the pleasures one has come to expect of him: pervasive intelligence, broad and deep knowledge, elegant prose, subtle wit and, by no means least, a singularly agreeable element of surprise."
—Washington Post
"As usual McEwan's prose is effortlessly seductive."
—The New York Times
"As entertaining as a very intelligent novel can be and vice versa ... Sweet Tooth is extremely clever in both the British and American senses (smart as well as amusingly tricky) and his most cheerful book by far."
—Kurt Andersen, The New York Times Book Review
"McEwan has pulled off something remarkable here: Sweet Tooth is a suspenseful plot-and-character-driven novel with an unexpected postmodern twist. It’s Jane Austen meets John Le Carré meets John Barth — not a combination that I imagine anyone has ever walked into a bookstore seeking. But it’s one whose delights turn out to be considerable."
—The Boston Globe
"An engaging book that's as much suspenseful drama as it is romantic love story."
—NPR
"Tricky and captivating ... This is a book you can think about for a long time, a book that lingers and disturbs, in a good way."
—Katie Roiphe, Slate
"With his new novel, Ian McEwan looks set to have his biggest success since 2001's Atonement, and deservedly so. Both books feature eloquent and convincing female narrator/protagonists and have the same sly concerns: the uses and misuses of the imagination ... A story set in a bitter climate, but one told with such poise and craft that the novel is, one has to say, ultimately a sweet read."
—Star Tribune
"A superb novel ... told with Ian McEwan’s signature crystal-clear prose. Bravo!"
—The Buffalo News
"A subtly and sweetly subversive novel [that is a] masterful manipulation of the relationship(s) between fiction and truth ... Britain’s foremost living novelist has written a book as drily funny as it is thoughtful."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“This is a great big beautiful Russian doll of a novel, and its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure ... Sweet Tooth is a comic novel and a novel of ideas, but, unlike so many of those, it also exerts a keen emotional pull.”
—Julie Myerson, The Observer
"Thoroughly clever ... a sublime novel about novels, about writing them and reading them and the spying that goes on in doing both ... McEwan has spied on real life to write Sweet Tooth, and in reading it we are invited to spy on him ... Rich and enjoyable."
—Financial Times
"A wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in … This is ultimately a book about writing, wordplay and knowingness."
—The Telegraph
“McEwan writes with his usual clinical precision, brilliantly evoking the London of dingy Camden flats, the three-day week and IRA atrocities. His assumption of a female persona is pitch-perfect.”
—Daily Mail
“A disgraced spy, a failed mission, a ruined lover: Ian McEwan’s new novel, Sweet Tooth, opens at full tilt ... The novel’s pleasures are multiple and, as always with McEwan, they begin with the storytelling.”
—Bloomberg Businessweek
“Sweet Tooth takes the expectations and tropes of the Cold War thriller and ratchets up the suspense ... A well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream.”
—The Independent
“Gloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny.”
—Irish Times
"McEwan fans won’t be disappointed by Sweet Tooth, and newcomers to the author will be meeting him at the top of his game."
—The Globe and Mail
Praise for Ian McEwan
“McEwan is one of the most gifted literary storytellers alive.”
—James Wood, The New Republic
“[McEwan’s] finely honed prose is a deep pleasure to experience.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“McEwan is in the first tier of novelists writing in English today . . . He has achieved a complete mastery of his craft.”
—The New York Observer
"McEwan's most stylish and personal book to date ... The year's most intensely enjoyable novel."
—The Daily Beast
"A tightly crafted, exquisitely executed page-turner — a post-modern hall of mirrors asking savvy questions about identity, all concealed in the immersive trappings of a Victorian novel complete with a marriage plot. There's such rich pleasure and vulnerability in McEwan's storytelling, such style and heart in his well-honed sentences."
—USA Today
"Ian McEwan’s delicious new novel provides all the pleasures one has come to expect of him: pervasive intelligence, broad and deep knowledge, elegant prose, subtle wit and, by no means least, a singularly agreeable element of surprise."
—Washington Post
"As usual McEwan's prose is effortlessly seductive."
—The New York Times
"As entertaining as a very intelligent novel can be and vice versa ... Sweet Tooth is extremely clever in both the British and American senses (smart as well as amusingly tricky) and his most cheerful book by far."
—Kurt Andersen, The New York Times Book Review
"McEwan has pulled off something remarkable here: Sweet Tooth is a suspenseful plot-and-character-driven novel with an unexpected postmodern twist. It’s Jane Austen meets John Le Carré meets John Barth — not a combination that I imagine anyone has ever walked into a bookstore seeking. But it’s one whose delights turn out to be considerable."
—The Boston Globe
"An engaging book that's as much suspenseful drama as it is romantic love story."
—NPR
"Tricky and captivating ... This is a book you can think about for a long time, a book that lingers and disturbs, in a good way."
—Katie Roiphe, Slate
"With his new novel, Ian McEwan looks set to have his biggest success since 2001's Atonement, and deservedly so. Both books feature eloquent and convincing female narrator/protagonists and have the same sly concerns: the uses and misuses of the imagination ... A story set in a bitter climate, but one told with such poise and craft that the novel is, one has to say, ultimately a sweet read."
—Star Tribune
"A superb novel ... told with Ian McEwan’s signature crystal-clear prose. Bravo!"
—The Buffalo News
"A subtly and sweetly subversive novel [that is a] masterful manipulation of the relationship(s) between fiction and truth ... Britain’s foremost living novelist has written a book as drily funny as it is thoughtful."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“This is a great big beautiful Russian doll of a novel, and its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure ... Sweet Tooth is a comic novel and a novel of ideas, but, unlike so many of those, it also exerts a keen emotional pull.”
—Julie Myerson, The Observer
"Thoroughly clever ... a sublime novel about novels, about writing them and reading them and the spying that goes on in doing both ... McEwan has spied on real life to write Sweet Tooth, and in reading it we are invited to spy on him ... Rich and enjoyable."
—Financial Times
"A wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in … This is ultimately a book about writing, wordplay and knowingness."
—The Telegraph
“McEwan writes with his usual clinical precision, brilliantly evoking the London of dingy Camden flats, the three-day week and IRA atrocities. His assumption of a female persona is pitch-perfect.”
—Daily Mail
“A disgraced spy, a failed mission, a ruined lover: Ian McEwan’s new novel, Sweet Tooth, opens at full tilt ... The novel’s pleasures are multiple and, as always with McEwan, they begin with the storytelling.”
—Bloomberg Businessweek
“Sweet Tooth takes the expectations and tropes of the Cold War thriller and ratchets up the suspense ... A well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream.”
—The Independent
“Gloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny.”
—Irish Times
"McEwan fans won’t be disappointed by Sweet Tooth, and newcomers to the author will be meeting him at the top of his game."
—The Globe and Mail
Praise for Ian McEwan
“McEwan is one of the most gifted literary storytellers alive.”
—James Wood, The New Republic
“[McEwan’s] finely honed prose is a deep pleasure to experience.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“McEwan is in the first tier of novelists writing in English today . . . He has achieved a complete mastery of his craft.”
—The New York Observer
Product Details
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More About the Author
Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His other award-winning novels are The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
302 of 336 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ian McEwan remains one of my favorite living authors. His latest novel SWEET TOOTH makes my affection for him even deeper. This is another of those stories like Kazuo Ishiguro's NEVER LET ME GO that too much said about the plot ruins the novel for other readers. I will quote, however, from the first paragraph of the novel as the narrator herself gives some secrets-- the book is chockfull of them and irony runs rampant-- away right away: "My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost 40 years ago [the early 1970's] I was sent on a secret mission for the British security service. I didn't return safely. Within eighteen months of joining I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a hand in his own undoing." In the next 300 plus pages Mr. McEwan in flawless prose fills the reader in on how these events came about. The last 20 or so of those pages is the kind that you read through while time stands still. I reacted the same to the last pages of a novel by another favorite writer many years ago, SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron, one of the supreme joys of reading fine novels.
Serena, as complex a character as any of Henry James` women characters, is forced by her mother to study math at Cambridge while her real love is literature, specifically fiction. "My mother told me she would never forgive me and she would never forgive herself if I went off to read English and became no more than a slightly better housewife than she was." She also is quite adept at getting into relationships that have no future although she soldiers on in her story that is set right in the middle of British politics in the early 1970's. (Serena votes for Wilson for prime minister.... Read more ›
Serena, as complex a character as any of Henry James` women characters, is forced by her mother to study math at Cambridge while her real love is literature, specifically fiction. "My mother told me she would never forgive me and she would never forgive herself if I went off to read English and became no more than a slightly better housewife than she was." She also is quite adept at getting into relationships that have no future although she soldiers on in her story that is set right in the middle of British politics in the early 1970's. (Serena votes for Wilson for prime minister.... Read more ›
101 of 116 people found the following review helpful
By Mark Simkin
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Ian McEwan is a great writer. He is such a master of the language that he is a pleasure to read. And this book had stories within stories that are very clever. It reminded me a little of Le Carre's "A Perfect Spy" in that it centers on the real silliness of lots of espionage activities, but somehow Le Carre was better on this. Perhaps because he knows the field better than McEwan. I found McEwan's story just a little too cute, too pat, maybe a little silly. If you're a diehard McEwan fan you'll like this book for the quality of the writing, which is as usual really very good. But ultimately I found myself unsatisfied by this novel.
81 of 96 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Somewhere in Ian McEwan's brilliant and riveting new novel, Sweet Tooth, readers are treated to a game of mathematical probability. The beautiful and duplicitous Serena Frome - the book's narrator and - walks her lover, a promising writer named Tom Healy, through a complex game of chance.
He doesn't truly grasp the context, yet soon after, he pens a story, donating her definition of probability to his key character. "At one level, it was obvious enough how these separate parts were tipped in and deployed. The mystery was in how they were blended into something cohesive and plausible, how the ingredients were cooked into something so delicious," Serena reflects.
Sweet Tooth is a reader's book and a writer's book. At its heart is invention; the logic that defines the outer world is sublimated into the author's vision of that world. It works beautifully and is, in my opinion, perhaps the most satisfying book that Ian McEwan has ever written. With masterpieces to his credit like Enduring Love, Saturday, Atonement, Amsterdam and others, that says a whole lot.
The plot incorporates elements of a classic spy story. Serena Frome is a beautiful and brilliant Cambridge student who is recruited to join the British M15 in the early 1970s during a jittery time in the country's history. Her special mission is to infiltrate the literary circle of an up-and-coming writer and essayist, Tom Healy in a psych-ops mission. To say much more would be to spoil the pleasure of discovery.
Suffice to say this: along the way, Mr. McEwan treats us to stories within stories. All of these dazzling stories carry within them the seeds of a future novel. Each is a polished little gem.... Read more ›
He doesn't truly grasp the context, yet soon after, he pens a story, donating her definition of probability to his key character. "At one level, it was obvious enough how these separate parts were tipped in and deployed. The mystery was in how they were blended into something cohesive and plausible, how the ingredients were cooked into something so delicious," Serena reflects.
Sweet Tooth is a reader's book and a writer's book. At its heart is invention; the logic that defines the outer world is sublimated into the author's vision of that world. It works beautifully and is, in my opinion, perhaps the most satisfying book that Ian McEwan has ever written. With masterpieces to his credit like Enduring Love, Saturday, Atonement, Amsterdam and others, that says a whole lot.
The plot incorporates elements of a classic spy story. Serena Frome is a beautiful and brilliant Cambridge student who is recruited to join the British M15 in the early 1970s during a jittery time in the country's history. Her special mission is to infiltrate the literary circle of an up-and-coming writer and essayist, Tom Healy in a psych-ops mission. To say much more would be to spoil the pleasure of discovery.
Suffice to say this: along the way, Mr. McEwan treats us to stories within stories. All of these dazzling stories carry within them the seeds of a future novel. Each is a polished little gem.... Read more ›
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful
By S. Schwartz
Format:Kindle Edition
Ian McEwan is an extraordinary author. His characterizations and his writing cadence are extraodinary. This book was really not what I expected. I was expecting a spy thriller book with earth-shattering and catastrophic segments. There is nothing life-threatening or dangerous about this book even though the element of surprise and the fear of the unexpected are both there for the reader. I have to admit that Serena Frome was probably one of the most unlikeable protagonists that I've ever read. She was very well portrayed and that is not why I didn't like her. She is just not a woman that I would be drawn to at all if I was to meet someone like her. She vacillates and can't seem to make a decision to save her life. She's insincere and a bit of a snob actually. She moves through her life and her main goal is to make no waves, stand for nothing and just drift. Having said that, I found the minor characters in the book were wonderful and very real. I especially liked Serena's sister and father. Although we don't see them much in the book, I found them very easy to picture and imagine. There's a lot about love, desire, deceit, creativity (in the form of the written word). Without giving away anything of the plot, there is even an evil character. A character that doesn't loom that large in the narrative, but one whose deception is actually behind the whole story. McEwan does such a good job of laying bare human deceptions and exposing all the cracks and breaks under the gloss of the human facade. It seems to come up and hit you as you read his books.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting novel
One of my favorite authors
and this is one of his best
great for spy and morals
and living on this palner
and this is one of his best
great for spy and morals
and living on this palner
Published 2 days ago by Eric
1.0 out of 5 stars
FRS
Maybe it is time to rethink the so called greatness of Mr. McEwan...living on one's reputation is the ultimate trickery and I think that this is what this book is a trickery and a... Read more
Published 2 days ago by FRS
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Little Spy Who Loved Fiction
McEwan inhabits the skin of a 23 year-old female MI5 agent (well, at least a junior desk-bound officer) circa the 1970s, and the story is ostensibly about how Serena Frome becomes... Read more
Published 6 days ago by J. Ang
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good for book club
This was not my favorite this year but some others in our book club really liked it,
The love story left me flat but that is just me.
The love story left me flat but that is just me.
Published 6 days ago by eleanor bilsey
4.0 out of 5 stars
I always enjoy McEwan's stories and this one was no exception
Good characters, intriguing setting and time, lots of tangles and sub-plots. It did leave me feeling kind of lost and empty.
Published 6 days ago by Mary C Forth
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Master of Prose Who Understands His Characters and Skillfully takes...
Ian Mcewan, no matter the story, is a master at penning the English language. I would rather read well-written prose than an exciting story by an author who doesn't have writing... Read more
Published 7 days ago by Darlene Zimmermann
3.0 out of 5 stars
A But tedious
McEwan's later books are becoming a bit tedious. I get to the end, but dont really engage and this one was no exception.
Published 7 days ago by Effie
3.0 out of 5 stars
Confusion squared
I guess I'm not one for spy stories. Atonement was brilliant but I finally went online to find out what I was reading this time. Read more
Published 8 days ago by Milton Katz
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mcewan does it again
Ian Mcewan does a gret job of drawing the reader into characters and their situations. The book reads like a travelogue of London in the 60s and 70s, and the British intelligence... Read more
Published 9 days ago by Barry
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing, well written
Very clever plot, a little Matriochka dolls scheme. Amusing, well written, funny at times. The ending a little pat, but happy endings are not so bad, if too simple, maybe lazy at... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Angela G
