Thanks for nothing, Ian McEwan.I really don't appreciate (view spoiler)[ the mindfuck. (hide spoiler)]Yes, yes, you're very clever.Two stars because the writing is good and I liked the story.Minus three stars for being a jerk.I'm NOT ENJOYING this recent obsession with(view spoiler)[ meta, (hide spoiler)] authors dearest....UPDATE 10/06/2014: On a more personal level, I was enjoying the heck out of the book and psychoanalyzing the main character. I was pleased as punch at how cold and even exh...

Just some open-ended thoughts. And spoilers, too, I suppose:I wonder if one of the reasons Serena is such a weak, passive, shallow main character is because, despite the first-person POV, McEwan can't quite bring himself to inhabit her? He has diluted her by having another character write her/spy on her (whom McEwan himself is writing/spying on).Note: In an interview promoting this book McEwan claimed that he has a prejudice against first-person narratives: "There are too many of them. They're t...

My dearest Tom,Upon reading your letter, my first impulse was to burn the accompanying package, walk away, and be done with us forever. But, as you seem to have uncannily predicted, I've now spent a couple of days and nights in your flat, devouring your manuscript and sleeping in between the sheets, nicely ironed. Given that you were in Paris and out of reach, there was no possibility of my responding to you immediately, so I had the luxury of abandoning myself to an extended period of reflectio...

What a disappointment -- the vivid passions that animate Atonement (even its "trick", which in retrospect seems too similar) have become cramped cleverness, just as, perhaps, the heroic World War II London of Atonement becomes the gray decline of the early 70s London of Sweet Tooth. To sum it up, I was very disappointed. There is a lot of erudition on show here -- about the Cold War, about the history of British intelligence, and especially, always, about books and literature. But to what end? E...

I've read all of McEwan's short stories and novels, and it's only now that I can see why his endings bother some readers (including readers like his main character, Serena). And if you are a different, and certain, kind of reader (one unlike Serena) you will have criticisms of his narratorial voice, but at the end, McEwan has an answer for every single one of them -- from why Serena sounds the way she does to those paddings of the backward glance (quote from the book). He has anticipated them al...

The opening paragraph of Sweet Tooth reveals the story's end, which is a tidy way of compelling you, dear reader, to focus on the important parts - the middle and such. You know it ends badly, so you can't possibly be disappointed; therefore, don't worry about it.But then you remember that you are reading Ian McEwan, master of unreliable narrators and oft-tricksy endings, and you wonder - am I being told the truth of the ending as it is, or the truth as the narrator would have me see it? And sud...

In my review of On Chesil Beach, I commented that I hadn’t read any of McEwan’s work since being profoundly disturbed by The Child in Time when I read it in the late 1980s. On Chesil Beach made me realise that I wanted to read more McEwan. I was therefore interested in this novel as soon as I saw it on the “new releases” table in my local bookstore. I elected to listen to the audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson, as it was cheaper for me to acquire than the text version and I knew from past ex...

To pigeonhole Sweet Tooth into a specific genre will be an act of folly. In the beginning it gives off the impression of a mere Cold war era spy thriller, then steps with casual ease into the territory of metafiction and in the end it changes tack and becomes a meditation on romance. But even so it never appears indecisive or loses sight of what it sets out to do - which is to juxtapose several contrasting themes and give us a fast-paced yet compelling human drama unfolding against the bleak bac...

If you want to read an Ian McEwan novel, choose a different one! McEwan has long been one of my favorite authors, but Sweet Tooth was hugely unsatisfying for me. I struggled to get through it; the plot dragged and the characters were both unbelievable and unlikable. It was well-written, but it lacked the emotional depth and psychological insight that to me is the mark of a great McEwan novel. The book has been marketed as a "spy thriller," and you'll be especially disappointed if you start readi...

My introduction to the fiction of Ian McEwan is Sweet Tooth, the author's 2012 literary thriller that aroused my senses like spying on an attractive woman in a London used bookstore might (while on a diplomatic mission, of course). Rather than run wild with the fantastical elements of espionage--with ninjas, neurotoxins or nightclubs--this is an atmospheric document of our narrator's affairs, with the professional careening into the sexual and literature directing her fate. The novel is a book l...

Another egotistical effort by the English maestro. (A writer that knows how important & essential the writer is and don't you forget it.) But this one is not the atrocious ego-driven character bullshit "Saturday," nor the slow & ultimately unengaging unengagement tale "On Chesil Beach." Thank god! (I assume "Lunar" is as successful as this one, in ungluing its reputation from McEwan, A.A.*)An MI5 literary-division spy affects the writing of her charge, a writer of the revolution; she gives him s...

I'm completely baffled by this book. All I want to do is go read analysis of it because it's so layered. So for that I have to say it did a great job as a novel of making me think, keeping me on my toes, and keeping me intrigued. It's not perfect by any means, and there are times I was a bit bored. But it was wholly original and enjoyable to read most of the time, and I loved the last chapter.

This was really reading totally outside any genre of interest to me. Something about the cover got me.(I'm shallow like that).Clever, but not terribly likeable, girl goes to Cambridge to study Maths which she doesn't work at (she'd rather be reading novels) but her main motivating factor is lurrrrrve. It would be, wouldn't it? So she falls in love with an older slightly mysterious married man which leads to a job as a real-life spy. So of course she falls in lurrrrve with the guy who is the mark...

I would like to know Ian McEwan—to be the kind of friend who meets him for lunch. If I were, I’d say, “All right, Ian, give it up. Tell me straight. How do you know what it feels like to be a woman? How do you know the sensations, the thoughts women rarely say about being with men? Don’t lie. I promise I’ll keep it a secret.”I think all good writers become their characters and hence, they are writing from an authentic place that is much bigger than who they are in day-to-day life. Plus, there is...

On the one hand, the heroine's insights on the whys and hows of other people's actions felt empowering. Her ongoing evaluation of the ultimate reasons for about everyone's actions was quite formidable. On the other hand, her emotional rollercoaster felt incredibly weird. Are there really people who do pay that much attention to their emotions? Sweet, lingering prose. Beautiful language, intoxicating imagery. An intersection of many styles of writing. A very memorable book to read in languor. Oh,...

This is my third McEwan novel, so I am not veteran enough to compare elements of SWEET TOOTH to his large body of work, but a few aspects of his talent brought me back to ATONEMENT, which is one of my favorite British contemporary novels, and SOLAR, has last novel. ATONEMENT proved that McEwan pens female characters with finesse--even complex, conflicted girls like thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis. In SWEET TOOTH, he kicks the femme character up a notch by writing in the first-person perspective

You need to have a thing for dark atmospheric novels; Sour Tooth would be more fitting. It’s certainly not a thriller and it’s a spy novel only in the literal sense. Timeline the 70’s, the intrigue of London’s M5 during the cold war really just background ambience for this character driven novel. It opens “My name is Serena Frome and almost forty years ago 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, havi...

I just started reading "Sweet Tooth" this morning before getting out of bed...My My, I can see I'm in for delightful *Ian McEwan* ride.....with his key narrator/female **Serena**.... an Professor 'Tony'. I wasn't crazy about Ian's last book "Solar"....nor a fan of "Chesil Beach" ---but a huge fan of most other books he wrote. ---(his early books) --So far-- "Sweet Tooth" has the 'feel' of what I love best about Ian McEwan ---He knows woman -- He knows men -- He knows about relationships -- "Swe...