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    Sweet Tooth
    Sweet Tooth
    Sweet Tooth
    Audiobook12 hours

    Sweet Tooth

    Written by Ian McEwan

    Narrated by Juliet Stevenson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Winner of such prestigious honors as the Booker Prize and Whitbread Award, Ian McEwan is justifiably regarded as a modern master. Set in 1972, Sweet Tooth follows Cambridge student Serena Frome, whose intelligence and beauty land her a job with England's intelligence agency, MI5. In an attempt to monitor writers' politics, MI5 tasks Serena with infiltrating the literary circle of author Tom Healy. But soon matters of trust and identity subvert the operation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 13, 2012
    ISBN9781470324018
    Sweet Tooth
    Author

    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.

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    Reviews for Sweet Tooth

    3.5/5

    1,049 ratings120 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Spies, love, literature – I was in heaven and loved this book! Sorry, no plot lines from me because I don’t want to give anything away. This is a classic novel that fits right in with my “perceptual bias” category.
    • 3/5
      Such an F&(*ing annoying book - so utterly brilliant and wonderful in parts (the last chapter is phenomenally written and constructed), yet so much of the book is bland porridge with no substance or purpose. I was utterly bored with half the chapters and loved the other half.
    • 5/5
      Ian McEwan is superb! The ending is the best part of the book. I can even imagine a sequel to this novel. The narrator does a fantastic job portraying each character.
    • 2/5
      SPOILERS. So this. As a disclaimer, I generally do not like stories set in the 1970s. There is no explanation for this -- I just picture it as a time where hideous orange and yellow decor was in style, clothing material was primarily polyester, disco was popular & hair styles were questionable at best. All important events that occurred in the 1970s are currently escaping me, which leads me to believe that obviously nothing of interest happened during that dark decade. I like books that involve: 1) British people, 2) spies, 3) female protagonists, 4) book-lovers & 5) a heartwarming coming-of-age/finding myself story, so I really thought I would like this book. I prefer my spies to be involved in intrigue set during either WWI or II but I put my misgivings about my most hated decade aside. I liked the plot but there were two things about this book that made it blah for me: 1) the Cold War intrigue (which was so boring/confusing to me that I was tempted to skim over those parts, but then realized what a major chunk they comprised), and 2) Serena, the main character. Serena, as we are told, is gorgeous & kind of smart, but not as smart as she thinks & is honestly THE WORST SPY EVER. She is constantly thinking about boys, even though it seems like she should be thinking about something more important instead, like BEING A SPY. For a mathematician, she is remarkably illogical and emotional. Yet she remains a detached narrator -- which makes sense I suppose when you get to the end. The opening really draws you in -- I was sent on a mission. I didn't return safely -- and I kept reading because I needed to know WHAT HAPPENED. And then...Serena slept with the guy from her secret mission? BIG SURPRISE -- she's been flirting with every man in sight, and gave little to no thought as to whether that was a good idea. So everyone found out that MI5 was secretly funding Tom? I mean...I tried to muster up the energy to care, but I just couldn't. In sum, Serena is boring & boy-crazy & I hate the Cold War. I love surprise endings, but by the time this one happened, I could care less.
    • 3/5
      I’ve tried and tried to like Ian McEwen, but to no avail. While I can appreciate the clarity and precision of his prose, it has always seemed somewhat soulless to me. And when his novels reveal their startling plot twists at the end, you can practically hear the Law & Order “cha-chung” sound in the background. His depiction of the inner lives of women characters is particularly unconvincing, although that actually turned out to be a strength in this book. All that being said, Sweet Tooth does have some things to recommend it. The novel is about a young university graduate who almost accidentally finds herself working for MI5, the British Secret Service, after being groomed for the job by an older professor with whom she has an affair. Her undercover task is to find and encourage with grant money the right sort of young writers whose work will provide cultural and intellectual support for the anti-communist side of the Cold War. Set in the 1970s, the novel does an excellent job of portraying the atmosphere of Britain in decline, beset by terrorism, economic woes, cultural upheaval and self-inflicted political wounds. At its best the novel is an exploration of the role of invention and deception in literature, politics and human relations.
    • 5/5
      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"
    • 3/5
      It is interesting that, except for near the end, the short short-stories within the story were more intriguing than the book's narrative.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      McEwan can get inside the head of a character better than any author I know. Added to that is his uncanny ability to re-create time and place accurately. Espionage, MI5, Cold War, Northern Ireland, with all the 1970s political and cultural references. McEwan is an engaging writer with superb literary skill. Even though this is not John le Carré espionage, and not even my favourite McEwan, that doesn't prevent it from being a first-rate novel, and one with a fine twist in the tail.
    • 4/5
      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'").
    • 4/5
      It held my attention, but I thought the ending was a bit too much of a trick. Funny that I didn't feel that way about "Atonement," but I thought that was all around a much better book. He's always a good writer, though, so it certainly wasn't a waste of time.
    • 4/5
      Sweet Tooth is the engaging story of Serena Frome, who spreads anything but serenity. She is recruited into MI5 at the behest of a former lover after graduating from Cambridge in the early 1970s. She becomes involved in Operation Sweet Tooth, designed to support writers in hope they spread the messages the government likes.Serena becomes involved with the writer she recruits, to disastrous effects. But as she puts it, no one dies. There’s a warmth in this novel that belies the subjects of espionage and deceit. Serena is likeable narrator, even as she discusses her deceits, and the consequences.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      The narrator tells us repeatedly that she doesn't like tricks of narration, so of course this whole thing is one big trick. The very last chapter reveals, in a fifteen page (seemingly never ending) letter, that the whole novel was actually written by the "narrator's" male lover, and wasn't a memoir at all. The letter is astoundingly cruel and dismissive of her, all the while saying that he loves and understands her and wants to marry her.
      Fuck that shit.

      There was barely any plot and very little actual characterization. The writing is good in parts but gets frequently bogged down in boring stretches of British politics. Basically, this was just too light weight to sustain the twist.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 1/5
      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
    • 3/5
      This was an audio book and if I had more knowledge of British post-WWII history, I would've liked it more. As it was much of the Cold War and IRA events flew past me. But there are books and spies, so that was a good mix. Serena Frume is coming of age in the early 70s, having earned a Maths degree at Cambridge and is recruited by her older lover/professor Tony for MI-5 - comparable to the CIA or some other secret organization. Despite her degree, her passion is literature and she is both a competent writer and insightful reader. Her task is to sign-on TH Hadley, upcoming novelist for a no-strings grant, that in many layers of secrecy does have strings - that are pulled by MI-5. The idea is to influence the arts in a anti-communist way, at least that was what I got out of it in my history deficit. Turns out the US had similar programs in place then too. Sounds like the 60s-80s was all covert operations. Serena, in her youth, beauty, and neediness, gets involved with an MI-5 co-worker which goes nowhere, then gets involved with Hadley himself which compromises her mission on some levels. The ending is worth hanging in for because it all blows up and open in quite a compelling way. But I definitely had to gloss over quite a lot of info that just had no traction or context for me. In reviewing Hadley's work there are some stories within stories that drew me back in and the beginning hints at the end, so I was determined to find out what happens.
    • 4/5
      Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan I've struggled with some of this guy's stuff.

      I read Atonement and Saturday, both grey dreary books. I couldn't believe that anyone would make a movie of Atonment, it was so dreadful. I'm not talking about his writing because that is good, but the subject matter? Well, one won't carry the other, they both have to run the course if not together then at least not too far apart.If you ever seen those couples that are cycling long distance, loaded up with bags and the man is hundred of yards in front of the woman. Well, it's kinda like he writes about that distance between the two. When you see them riding like that you don't need a couple of chapters from the old testament telling you all about it. Well, I don't but obviously he does.It was therefore with some degree of preemptive disappointment that I started this book.It was a bit of a pot boiler in fact with mini skirts, sex and spies. All in all a bit of a lark really. I'm glad to see he is cheering up, this one is set in the 60's and 70's and I guess life was more colourful then.

      With a supremely clever twist at the end, I bet he was good at school too.

      It made me think of an Ian Dury song, "There ain't half been some clever bastards".
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Liked it more the second time around.
    • 2/5
      This is my very first novel by the author Ian McEwan. The book has been marketed as a "spy thriller," and you'll be especially disappointed if you start reading with those expectations. The book is actually a rather tedious and overworked meditation on literature. It's a given it’s about deception but with layers upon layers; deception taken to a whole new level.

      When I read, I’m looking for a gut punch. It’s always some profundity nestled in the mundane shit that makes up everyday existence. And that, in part, is why this book was such a disappointment. It was just mundane existence. There were no twists, no turns, nothing unexpected. It was like driving home from work.

      I was also bored by the really heavy-handed insertion of Cold War history and politics. It detracted from the story, but, at the same time, the story couldn’t function without it. I can appreciate setting and the desire to plant a story in a specific historical period, but, above all else, a good novel should be timeless.

      I found most of the characters at times quite glib. The narrative is sometimes sterile, lacking any warmth. The more I read, the more I struggled to get through it; the plot dragged and the characters were both unbelievable and unlikable. It seemed well-written, but it lacked the emotional depth and psychological insight that to me is the mark of a great novel.

      The main character, Serena Frome, fresh out of Cambridge becomes a spy for the British government. Yet she has not a whit of common sense. Strange that she managed a degree from Cambridge...? She is passive, incredibly immature, and constantly looking for her next sexual liaison. Sound like a MI5 operative to you? Not to me. She also written in a way that makes you question if the writer knows how to write women at all. She falls in love with nearly every man she meets and can think of little but the next sexual encounter. At every turn, she's making love again, as if that's all that inspires her to live. She doesn't seem to have much self-worth, unless she has a boyfriend, and is loved by someone. She's self-centered, without scruples, and completely willing to jeopardize her mission when it suits her. I wonder how she hung onto that job for as long as she did...?

      At the end of the day, this is not a "spy novel" at all; the spy part is so flimsy it almost can't bear the weight it's meant to carry. So you need to suspend disbelief to see what Serena's doing as undercover/spying/intelligence work at all. instead, it's a love story, but not a romantic one, for the simple reason that Serena isn't really very interesting. She intentionally screws up her job which she has no aptitude for by developing not one, but two on the job romantic entanglements. She's a pretty bad friend, an unsympathetic sister and a fairly absent daughter. But she's really pretty, we're given to understand. All these traits are in service of McEwan's master plan. But they don't make it much fun to spend 300-odd pages with her as our ostensible guide, as she's kind of a bore.

      As for the eventual hero of the piece, the most fun McEwan has all book is making up short stories for our fictional writer to have written, to dig into. While is is fun in doses, the recaps and quotes of his writing drag after a bit.. This is a clever, annoying trick that somehow wants us to think about love, art, life, and how it might all relate to spying. There are tricks in this story, but they seemed tired and worn thin to me. It felt like McEwan was trying to be too clever, and the plot suffered because of it.

      In the end we have a spy novel with no mystery, and a love story with no romance. It may well become rather forgettable, after another book or two is read by me. In short, by the time it all ends, with more of a small firecracker than a big bang, you are mostly relieved to be finished. I still cannot decide if this novel was thoroughly annoying, quite clever, or both.
    • 2/5
      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...
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.)
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.