Sweet Tooth

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2012 Ian McEwan (P)2012 Random House Audiobooks

Slow, methodical, Stunning!

4.5 stars. This was my first McEwan novel. I hadn’t realized until I was half way through it that he also wrote Atonement. Which I have not yet read but heard much about since the movie won tons of accolades. When I finished this book I shouted Brilliant and wanted to applaud. It’s definitely not for everyone and I can understand the varying ratings and reviews. It’s a very slow and methodical yet stunning story. You have to be patient with it.

I’m bad at short synopsis but basically Serena begins working at Mi5 in part because of a relationship she had with a married professor. While there she gets assigned an operation with codename Sweet Tooth. This is Mi5’s attempt to fund writers whose political views align with governments. She is tasked with hiring a particular writer she ultimately falls in love with. There are common themes here, for example the oft used girl meets boy under false circumstances, ends up falling in love, boy finds out, girl loses boy and ultimately girl gets boy back. However not the case here. Things don’t play out the way you would think.

No spoilers here but I also thought the item found while she was undercover as a cleaning lady was going to be more substantial than it ultimately was. Though I guess if it did it would become more of a spy novel than what it was intended to be.

I thought the short story writing she reads by Haley was pretty fascinating as well. I know people don’t usually like these sub stories especially when they have no direct impact to the overall book but I love them. They make such an impact for the couple pages they take up. The mannequin?!

The ending chapter was just brilliant though. You finish the book making all kinds of assumptions and having revelations.

I would definitely recommend.

Slow- maybe audio is not the best way to read

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

no- it was too slow of a book to listen to but I might enjoy reading not listening to this.

If you’ve listened to books by Ian McEwan before, how does this one compare?

I have read other Ian McEwan books and enjoyed them. He writes beautiful stories but perhaps they should be read and not listened to.

What three words best describe Juliet Stevenson’s performance?

Average- I have come to realize that I have a hard time listening to narrators with a British accent.

Such an annoying protagonist

The narrator is pretty good but the story is so annoying - because the main character is so annoying. I'm assuming she must be gorgeous because I cannot imagine another reason why any of the men in the story want to spend time with her. There seem to be no women in her life which is perhaps not surprising; she's endlessly self-reflective and self-absorbed and thinks of no one but herself.

4.5 stars loved it

This is my intro to Ian McEwan’s work. A bit grey and slow at times but this isn’t a failing. I loved it

Beautifully written but boring

Such beautiful writing. It started out well but the storyline just went flat. I kept waiting for something more….

What a wonderful ending and the author brings it right back to main character.

Life is not perfect..,we do the best we know to do and that is not always consciously. However, lousy decisions are not always made with malicious intent. I just watched a movie and it ended with a comment like this…and they lived happily ever after..:oh no…life is hard work…they had a happy life…

Perfect Book for your Literary Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth is a compelling, intriguing listen that grabs hold immediately; from first sentence to last satisfying twist. Like McEwan's excellent book "Atonement," the author's pitch perfect prose unveils a multi-layered story that explores universal human themes of secrecy, loyalty, betrayal and identity.

Set in 1970s London, "rather gorgeous" recent Cambridge grad Serena Frome tells her story with some self awareness and a wry sense of humor. She describes her teen-age self as "the first person to truly understand Orwell's 1984." Recovering from an abrupt break-up, Serena throws herself into a low level job with MI-5. Disenchanted with the mundane nature of the work, Serena quickly agrees to participate in a covert cultural program that funds young writers in an effort to win the "war of ideas" taking place in Cold War Europe. Of course the romantically vulnerable Serena falls for her target, author T.C. Healy, but luckily the ensuing story isn't formulaic or predictable.

As a slavish admirer of LeCarre (well, truth be told my passionate secret affair is really with George Smiley) I reveled in the scenes set at MI-5 headquarters. McEwan's MI-5 was so evocative of "The Circus" that I almost expected Connie Sachs to lumber around the corner, god bless her. Some of the darkness in the story reminded me of John Fowles, as did the novel's unconventional structure. Interesting cameos by real life literati added fun and rang true: Martin Amis buys dejected author Healy a whisky, and Ian Hamilton offers words of wisdom to an agitated Serena.

Experienced actress Juliet Stevenson does a stellar job narrating. I especially enjoyed the way she voiced an American ex-CIA agent. Cringe worthy only because I have a feeling we really do sound like that to the world. She was dead on and a treat to hear.

Finally, the idea of "a contract between a book's author and its reader" is explored in various interesting ways. Afraid of being manipulated or feeling tricked, I steeled myself for disappointing ending. Thankfully, this book's author seems to truly like and respect his reader. Apart from an almost (just a teensy bit) Poirot-like explanatory soliloquy, McEwan keeps his end of the bargain and then some. "Sweet Tooth" is wonderfully thought provoking; the kind of novel you just want to mull over for awhile before beginning anything else.

FIne narration, ho-hum story

Juliet Stevenson is a real pro, and I always enjoy her narration. In this case she elevates a rather pedestrian story to the point where it was a tolerable listen.

Maybe there comes a point when one has read one too many modern British novels, but I often feel that I have heard the same story one too many times. (Oxbridge graduate smartens up and faces the real world, the real world consisting of spies and bureaucrats.) Yes, this one had a couple of twists and turns, but don't they all?

The stated protagonist of the novel is a woman, and it is nice to encounter one who is as selfish, misguided, and dull as any modern male:) As for the main male literary character, I found him just plain unconvincing, and the denouement of the story reeked of chick-lit (post modern version, of course.)

For me, the most enjoyable parts of the novel were the very witty takes on post-WWII literary figures, most of them named by name.

Sweet But Unsatisfying - Like Mediocre Chocolate

This is a spy novel like Hershey's is fine chocolate--okay, but a pale imitation of the real thing.

It was gimmicky, like the middle school game where one child asks another a series of questions with one-word answers, then makes up a story that incorporates all the words. Maybe it makes sense, maybe not. But everything that happens--even seemingly irrelevant details-- show up in the end.

The best parts were the short stories that Tom wrote--and be sure to pay attention, because like everything else, they will show up in the end.

Oddly, the book wasn't boring, even though all the main characters were boring and unlikeable (except for Shirley, who was a hoot.). Once I realized that there was no "there" there, I stopped waiting for anything substantial to happen and just listened to the narrative. This was actually pleasant, since the writing flowed well and the narrator was excellent.

Every book doesn't have to be a great book--and this certainly isn't. But if you quickly give up that expectation, it's a good read--like a Hershey's bar.

Too Clever by Half...

I came close to abandoning Sweet Tooth at about the two thirds mark. On the surface, Ian McEwan's Serena Frome is yet another poorly crafted unreliable narrator from the UK's literary in-crowd, but well- it's Ian McEwan so I stuck with it. I suspected the discussion of various 'literary tricks' (Serena's term, not mine) peppered throughout the novel would eventually be applied to this tale of espionage, literature, love and naivete.
I was not disappointed: not really. Those literary discussions do indeed telegraph to the the reader what's really going on: it’s all very clever and exquisitely crafted with not a stitch dropped, a superfluous word or clue misplaced in this literary mystery.

The problem is Serena. My mind accompanied Juliet Stevenson's superb reading of Sweet Tooth with a constant harangue of “what a TWIT!”. In the end, the reader is made privy to the reasons for Serena's utter twitiness, but in order to get there, one suffers through her entire banal, twitty narrative. McEwan made one mistake, holding himself back too much with that voice: he seems to have forgotten the reader in all his clever construction. That one mistake prevents Sweet Tooth from being a masterpiece.

Impressed as I was with Sweet Tooth, the reader has to work too hard to arrive at a resolution to the mystery of Serena Frome.