Sweet Tooth

By Ian McEwan
Read by Juliet Stevenson

 • 12.08 Hours • 11/13/2012 • unabridged
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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.

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Summary

Summary

A New York Times bestseller

A 2012 New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books for Fiction

A 2012 San Francisco Chronicle Best Book for Fiction

A Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Season

A 2012 Kansas City Star Top 100 Book for Fiction

A 2012 Booklist Editors’ Choice Selection for Fiction

A 2012 BookPage Best Book for Fiction

A 2012 eMusic Best Audiobook of the Year

A Kirkus Reviews “New and Notable Title”, November 2012

Selection for the November 2012 Indie Next List

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2012

An Amazon Top 10 Book of 2012 for Literature

A Publishers Weekly bestseller

A USA Today bestseller

A Los Angeles Times bestseller

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.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“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.” —Observer (London)
“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.” —Independent (London)
“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.” —Telegraph (London)
“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 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
“McEwan’s most stylish and personal book to date…The year’s most intensely enjoyable novel.” —Daily Beast
“Gloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny.” —Irish Times
“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 (London)
“McEwan fans won’t be disappointed by Sweet Tooth, and newcomers to the author will be meeting him at the top of his game.” —Globe and Mail
“One of McEwan’s finest female characters, Serena Frome…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…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.” —Amazon.com, editorial review
“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)
“Juliet Stevenson has a lovely reading voice with a slight British accent that captures the personality of Serena in this first person narration. She convincingly expresses the ambivalence that is tearing Serena apart.” —SoundCommentary.com

Reviews

Reviews

by Lauren M 9/13/2017
Overall Performance
Narration
Story

Stick around for the ending...

With his pretty style and painstakingly planned out plots, Ian McEwan’s writing will never fully disappoint me, but this book kept me only vaguely invested until the last chapter twist. I think I assumed a MI5 spy story to have a little more espionage and action, but putting aside that wrong assumption, I still really enjoyed Serena’s character, especially as narrated by Juliet Stevenson. The book starts out with hints at the ending, so you know something intriguing is coming, but it took a long time getting there. I definitely appreciate the cleverness of the ending, which in retrospect makes the whole book more interesting, but the reading itself left a little to be desired. Still worth a read, but I’d probably vote for others of McEwan’s books over this one.

Author

Author Bio: Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as the children’s novel illustrated by Anthony Browne, The Daydreamer. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. Some of his other award-winning novels include The Child in Time, Amsterdam, and Atonement—which became a popular film.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : Digital Download
Runtime: 12.08
Audience: Adult
Language: English
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