Sweet Tooth

Written by Ian McEwan

Narrated by Juliet Stevenson

Ian McEwan's mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty audiobook of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self.

Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere.

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a 'secret mission' which brings her into the literary 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.

The Sweet Tooth audiobook is beautifully narrated by Juliet Stevenson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House UK Audio
• Release date: Aug 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781448139750

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan (Aldershot, Reino Unido, 1948) se licenció en Literatura Inglesa en la Universidad de Sussex y es uno de los miembros más destacados de su muy brillante generación. En Anagrama se han publicado sus dos libros de relatos, Primer amor, últimos ritos (Premio Somerset Maugham) y Entre las sábanas, las novelas El placer del viajero, Niños en el tiempo (Premio Whitbread y Premio Fémina), El inocente, Los perros negros, Amor perdurable, Amsterdam (Premio Booker), Expiación (que ha obtenido, entre otros premios, el WH Smith Literary Award, el People’s Booker y el Commonwealth Eurasia), Sábado (Premio James Tait Black), En las nubes, Chesil Beach (National Book Award), Solar (Premio Wodehouse), Operación Dulce, La ley del menor, Cáscara de nuez, Máquinas como yo, La cucaracha y Lecciones y el breve ensayo El espacio de la imaginación. McEwan ha sido galardonado con el Premio Shakespeare. Foto © Maria Teresa Slanzi.

Reviews for Sweet Tooth

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What I took to be the norm -- taut, smooth, supple -- was the transient special case of youth. To me, the old were a separate species, like sparrows or foxes.

Sweet Tooth is a deceit. There is a masque of espionage at play. There are feints, there are lies. The reader weaves as in concert, only to discover the ruse. This work also concerns a portrait of the early 70s, one of orange miniskirts and sanitation strikes. This is also a novel about deceit, especially literary deceit. This particular knot takes place during the war of ideas, the Cold War, guerilla chic and the weight of words. Did I mention deceit? I was prepared to hate this novel but then fell helpless in its sway. Sweet Tooth is a gripping journey, one well worth your time.

[rab1953-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a book with a flaw. It purports to be about propaganda and literature: both literature as a form of propaganda and propaganda in other forms. Our protagonist, Serena (!) is first educated about ruling class propaganda in The Times of London and elsewhere by her left-leaning tutor, who turns out to be a Russian agent. Characters spin their stories in their own way and have their favoured versions of the truth. Serena gradually learns to doubt the surface messages. She is brought into MI5, and becomes part of a low-level propaganda campaign, providing a disguised income to Tom, a promising novelist who writes about freedom and creativity. Part of Serena’s indoctrination is a review of the efforts of the Comintern and CIA propaganda branches to support their own literary favourites. In the end, the whole scheme comes apart, and as readers we have to re-evaluate the story of Serena.Serena is more than a bit naïve, a shallow but voluminous reader who slowly learns to appreciate more literary writing. She is taken with Tom’s creative stories, sometimes quite moved by them, although the summaries she recounts seem rather bizarre, more like academic writing exercises than actually convincing stories. Serena falls for Tom and they have an affair, although she worries about how to tell him that she is a fraud who has been undermining his professional credibility. When Serena’s ex-lover brings Tom a different story that undermines her credibility, Tom turns the tables on her and makes up his own story. In the end, we see how creative story-telling is more successful than bureaucratically inspired propaganda, even in the hands of a literary writer.All this is very post-modern, questioning the meaning of storytelling and point-of-view, which could be an interesting twist, although hardly a new idea.The flaw, which I felt before reaching the various plot turns, is that it’s just not that interesting. The characters are sketched with little detail or depth, and their crises are not engaging. The plot seems to have so little at stake that it’s not interesting. The occasional background details of the social unrest of Britain in the early 1970s actually sparked more interest for me than the central story line. So it undermines the message that creative fiction is better than government propaganda when the creative fiction that I’m reading feels flat and boring.On a side note, the story line seems to challenge the notion of artificial limitations on writers and that writers can’t appropriate someone else’s voice. McEwan writes in the voice of a woman as if to show that it can be done successfully. In fact, the voice of Serena seems convincing enough as a young woman in 1970s London, but the fact that the story she is describing isn’t very successful actually seems to support the notion that writing in the voice of another is inherently limiting and incomplete.My reaction to the book is totally subjective, and perhaps others would react more deeply to the intensity of the love affair and the inherent conflict and loss that threaten it. But in the end, it seems to me to be another thought experiment that doesn’t really work rather than a successful novel. (For a thought experiment that does work even though much wilder than this one, I both enjoyed and bought into Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union.)

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's a delicious episode, which I've got to mention in passing, that had me laughing out loud. Serena is asked to come to the presence of four guys and one of the things the five men waiting up there ask her to do is to rank the novelists William Golding, Kingsley Amis and another guy, whose name I forgot, in order of merit (I won't tell which one came out on top in her view...). Serena's love of books, it turns out, is what interests them. Their project is to convince some writers of a leftish but non-communist tendencies, with a view to influencing the British media away from its increasingly anti-western bias.

I've got mixed feelings about this book. For me it didn't work on all levels. As a pure spy story, it fell short. But it's quite clear to me, that the author's purpose was to go beyond that. As a pure literary effort it works beatifully. I was expecting something more spyesque...My fault, not the author's :)"

[maryhollis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stilted, one-dimensional protagonist. This was not my favorite McEwan book.

[jonimfisher · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written story told by academically bright girl who gets caught up in dangerous situations because of her vulnerability--her hunger for love that she seems to trade for sex. I didn't like this story as much as I adored Atonement. Brilliantly descriptive writing, but story told at arm's length from the reader as if told in asides.

[n.w.moors-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Serena Frome graduates from Cambridge in 1972 after majoring in math. After an affair with a professor, she goes to London and gets a job with MI5 on his recommendation. The Cold War is going on, and MI5 is just starting to recruit women into its ranks. Serena gets an assignment to recruit a young writer, Tom Haley; MI5 will finance him since he's written some anti-Communist short stories, and they're hoping he'll produce a novel of the same type under Serena's guidance.One of the best parts of Ian McEwan's writing is the twist he incorporates at the end. Sweet Tooth is especially good at this since he incorporates several of Tom Haley's short stories into the book, each with their own little twists. The book is told from Serena's point of view or maybe not: read it and see what you think. The writing is excellent, as always from this author. He does a wonderful job of picking out the little details that depict the era. "In the hippie pubs around Camden Lock, which was not yet a tourist attraction, the long-haired men were more insidious and persistent with softer come-ons about their inner feminine spirit, the collective unconscious, the transit of Venus and related hokum."Ian McEwan always makes me think and takes me places I haven't been before. Sweet Tooth is another fine novel from him in a long line of great books.

[p1g5purt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Clever, but a little flat.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's hard to review this book. Crazy. A bit boggling. I usually don't like books that so neatly tie up all the loose ends in the conclusion, but this one needs to in order to make it work. And it does. Brilliant.
All the Cold War, British subterfuge politics made my head spin and I know I didn't grasp a lot of it, but it still makes the book interesting and different. Great writing all along. Certainly one in which you should not read the last chapter first. Why ruin a good book?

[johnwbeha · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is probably not Ian McEwan's best book, but it is still very, very good and a very enjoyable read. The plot is very clever with lots of twists and turns as befits a setting within the world of MI5. The female protagonist is engaging, if occasionally irritating and her male friends are distinctively drawn. It has taken me a long time to get around to reading this; given it is January I resolve to read him more speedily,

[joanasimao-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Clever...really clever!

[readyreader_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this book for my book club and finished it, but otherwise probably would not have. The "mission" that Serena Frome was assigned seemed like "much to do about nothing." I would have preferred a coming of age story for a vicar's daughter in the 70's that wasn't complicated by her MI5 assignment. I guess I have trouble believing that a government would fund writers to create works to influence a political philosophy in their society. Isn't it more expedient to just run TV commercials? Ha ha.

[danielle_burnette-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Being a huge Ian McEwan fan, I started reading Sweet Tooth with gusto, and expected to devour this book within days. I liked the secret service premise and especially the opening lines. However, the first third of the book felt a little slow to me; I didn't quite get why I need to read so many minute details of Serena Frome's early life. Yet I was determined to stick with the story because I felt certain there would be a payoff. And there is a payoff, an awesomely intricate one, but there is not glimpse of it until almost halfway though the novel, when Serena starts living more outside the relatively safe existence (except for her taste in men) carried over from childhood. And perhaps that was part of the story's point, to show how someone raised with a respect and understanding of authority can morph into someone willing to subvert it. I do wonder if this could have been shown with a quicker dive into the meat of the story, and a tiny bit less divergence into early Cold War politics. In the end, I enjoyed the novel and appreciated once again, McEwan's skill as a writer.

[kevinashley_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The blurb tells us that this is a book set in the cold war of the 1970s in Britain. Serena Frome, a somewhat reluctant graduate of mathematics at Cambridge, joins MI5 and (amongst other tasks) is set the task of recruiting a writer to a nebulous programme of cultural attrition. He thinks she works for a cultural foundation; she is not entirely sure what it is that MI5 wants of him or her. The relationship between Serena and the writer, Tom Haley, moves from the professional to the personal. On this, it would seem, the plot must turn.To an extent it does, but it isn't as central as you might think. This certainly isn't a typical cold-war spy thriller, and fans of that genre are likely to be disappointed. It uses some of the same devices and moods - the gloomy moral ambiguity that pervades much of John Le Carre's work, and the occasional questions about the real loyalties of some of those around the protagonist. There's far less of this than there might be in a typical thriller, though, and tension really only appears in the final chapters of the book. Before that, we learn much of Serena's life before the service and dullness of her existence in the first few years in the service. The ill-chosen lovers provide a contrast with what seems a happy and uncomplicated relationship with Tom - uncomplicated except for the secret she must keep from him. He routine work helps us understand the role of domestic intelligence in Britain at the time, and provide a reason for her to want this somewhat minor assignment.In the middle passages of the book, the author allows himself an excursion into the examination of the process of writing. Serena reads all of Tom's work both before she meets him and afterwards, and we're given more detail than you might expect of each of his short stories. There are direct quotes, along with speculation as to Tom's intent, the relationship between different plots and characters, and to Tom's own life. In reading this, we cannot help but ask the same questions of the book we're reading.There's rising tension towards the end, and a twist of which many other reviewers have written. It would be unfair to give detail about either. I'm not giving anything away by saying that I didn't find the twist revelatory in any sense as many others seemed to, and it certainly didn't make me want to re-read what I had just read. The book is very easy reading, it's enjoyable and well-crafted. But I would not want to revisit it. It's not my favourite of McEwan's by a long shot, but it's still a very good novel.It does an excellent job of evoking a mood of the time, of Britain in the 1970s and the Establshment's attitude to the social change taking place. I'm a few years younger than Serena's meant to be, and I didn't have the privilege upbringing she had, but otherwise this is a Britain I grew up in and I'm very familiar with it. Other reviewers seem to find some of this background irritating. There are occasional references to current events that are a convenient shorthand if the time and place are familiar to you. If they aren't, I suggest you ignore them rather than scurrying to encyclopaedias as others have done. The nature of these external events just aren't necessary to following the book. I notice that those reviewers didn't object to the many literary references that the book is also full of, and yet these could be seen as equally off-putting. I recognised some but by no means all of them. I didn't feel obliged to look up the ones I was unfamiliar with and I don't think that affected my enjoyment either.When you read this book just go with the flow and go quickly. It's better that way.

[tedwitham · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am in awe of McEwan's inventive story-telling and his insight into human behaviour. Sweet Tooth was sweeter and more rounded than "On Chesil Beach"

[daftboy1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Spy story set in early/mid 1970s England Main character Serena Frome a recent university graduate joins MI5She is tasked to handle an up and coming writer called Tom Haley.Serena and Tom fall in love. Tom is unaware that Serena is a spy.Will Tom find out and will the love last? This is good nostalgic book set in a time before mobile phones and the internet. Well written book this.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It almost seems as though Ian McEwan approaches fiction writing as a form of self-education, given the amount of research he clearly does into the professions of his characters. We've had surgeons, physicists, judges, and now women spying for MI5 in the 1970s. His research is always thorough enough to convince me the characters are real, and though there may be a bit of factual overload that gets a bit boring at times, I found this more readable than most spy novels. I liked the 1970s setting with its cold-war obsessions and three-day-week and thought this came across well. I thought the plot was so-so - the "Sweet Tooth" thing felt a bit far-fetched and doomed to failure, but the romance element of it, despite Serena apparently falling in love with every male that crosses her path, the uglier the better, was well done.I can definitely say I've learned something. Partway through someone uses the term "berk", as casually as I might use it myself in fact. Serena observes that many people will be aware of its origins in rhyming slang. (Rhyming slang? *Hastily consults Google*) Nurse! The smelling salts! Won't be using that quite so casually in future...There is a twist at the end that I saw coming, partly because of some over enthusiastic synopsis writing on the back cover. I'd avoid reading too much of that before tackling the novel. You generally know what you're going to get with an Ian McEwan novel and this is very much business as usual.

[jack2410 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It is interesting that, except for near the end, the short short-stories within the story were more intriguing than the book's narrative.

[bookishjojo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

the book started out really well for me and i was sucked right into the story. the book is dedicated to christopher hitchens. it's meta-fiction - many authors and books, as well as a book award (the austen prize, which is "better than the newly founded booker") feature on the pages of this novel. but...around the halfway/two-thirds mark...it got a bit...boring. which was disappointing - given the book also features mi5, spyishness and a bit of mystery. it could have been snap, crackle, pop-a-lopping off the pages, but it wasn't. and at the very end...i was unsatisfied. UN.SATISFIED. so...yeah. mcewan confuses me as my experiences with his writing are so up and down. i loved saturday and amsterdam but really loathed on chesil beach. for me, he's inconsistent not only from one book to the next, but even within a given book.

[booksinthebelfrey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was hoping for a little more fizz from this book, combining as it does two of my favorite fictional milieus (the intelligence community and the literary "scene"), but although McEwan's writing is as polished and stylish as ever, the story ultimately falls flat. The metafictional dimensions of the plot, as well as the rather tediously clever ending, all feel a bit stale, and while I often enjoy the off-kilter perspective of an unreliable or suspect narrator, I do still prefer to be engaged by said narrator on some level as a character, which sadly was not the case with Miss Serena Frome ("rhymes with 'plume'").

[eapalmer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An engaging and entertaining romp through the muck of the intelligence world of early 1970s Britain. The middle section was a bit boggy, but the ending more than made up for it. I didn't see it coming, but I was willing to buy into it.

[Wessel van Huyssteen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The prose is seductive, the suspense unrelenting and the twists never lets up until the last sentence. What a joy it was to experience.

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Seemed like a clever, absorbing, but imperfect story until I got to the last chapter, which was.... unexpected and great. Maybe a little artificial - but perfect for the book.

[amzzz_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Could writers help to end the Cold War? Would the British Secret Service use them? Where do relationships fit in? This book asks some interesting questions and the end left me thinking.

[charon07 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I know Ian McEwan is capable of great things, but this makes him seem a bit of a one-trick pony. What was both clever and powerful in Atonement here is just a clever trick, and one he's already used. Plus I didn't find the subject or the characters anywhere near as interesting as other McEwan novels I've read. Still, I've got to grant him its cleverness.

[betsy_crumley · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I wish I had Serena's talent of speed reading. I found the background story of MI5-6 not developed enough-i found that part interesting--the book just went on and on and on--- finally picked up in the last 80 pages-good grief--too little too late

[fromthecomfychair · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Liked it more the second time around.

[tmph_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This, and Atonement, I just don't want to be in a man's brain pretending to be in a girl's or a woman's brain.
I enjoyed somewhat the "spying" parts of the story, the very le Carré insider's views and thinking. But the story itself, the writing, and especially the dull ending doesn't reflect much of an intellect.

[pdcread · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It is the early 1970s Britain. There is industrial unrest, Ira bombings and the Cold War is still at its height. Serena Frome, the daughter of a bishop, is still at school; even though she has a love for literature and language, she has a talent for maths and is persuaded against her better judgement to read mathematics at Cambridge. Whilst there she has a brief but intense affair with Professor Tony Canning. He ends it abruptly after his wife finds out.

After graduating with a third, she is approached by MI5 to join them. Canning had recommended her for a position before they had split; it is low level, but secure. After a while she is presented with an opportunity to work on a operation called ‘Sweet Tooth’. The plan is too offer money to new writers with a anti communist skew, she has been picked because of her love of reading. Her contact will be Thomas Haley, a young writer with a promising talent. Posing as a representative of the Freedom International Foundation, she travels to Sussex to offer him a stipend to write. She falls for his writing first and then for him, as they embark on a passionate affair. He gains the confidence to start writing a dystopian novel, but the themes in it are not to MI5s liking, but will the critical acclaim for the book he gets reveal Serena’s deception

It is not a bad novel, and like most of McEwan’s I have read, it is well written. I thought it was going to be a spy novel, and there was a dusting of that genre in there, but it was a love story primarily. It does have a mix of betrayal, suspicion and complicated family backgrounds too, and a plot that writhes around, but for me it really didn’t have much depth to the story, and the ending was a little too neat. Rather than a sugary sweet tooth, it was more saccharin...

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have to say this book was a let down and did not meet my expectations. I've read 4 other Ian McEwan novels and enjoyed all of the them. The beautiful writing, complex characters who are so realistic with their foibles, and a cleverly crafted plot -- that is what I expect when I pick up a novel by Ian McEwan. The book starts out well with a brilliant plot. It's the 1970's during the Cold War. British intelligence is recruiting authors by giving them stipends to write. But the authors they pick are ones who they feel have anti-Communist tendencies and the hope is that by letting these authors write great novels, they will subtly influence society's view of Communism. One of the authors they have successfully recruited is George Orwell and what could be more anti-Marxist than Animal Farm? Of course the authors are free to write what they want and don't realize that these money grants are actually from British Intelligence instead of a literary foundation. Clever, right?But the execution of this book just dragged on. In several articles about Ian McEwan, it is mentioned that this book is slightly autobiographical and maybe that is the problem. There is too much chaff that should have been weeded out. Is it because he was trying to include specific events in his life? I know if there was a novel based on my life, it would be very boring. I still enjoy this author and I'm looking forward to his next book, but this one wasn't one of his best.

[stephengoldenberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not one of McEwan's best novels. It starts well with a well developed narrative voice but then slows down and doesn't seem to go anywhere. In the end, it relies for its effect from a 'twist' at the end much the same as 'Enduring Love' but it comes too late to redeem the book.
For a similar but, it my modest opinion, more powerful and relevant story on a similar theme and with a similar first person narrator, I can recommend my own novel 'The Lying Game' (see my dashboard site).