Author:Ian McEwan
'A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal... Acute, witty...winningly cunning' Sunday Times
The year is 1972, the Cold War is far from over and Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5. Sent on Operation Sweet Tooth - a highly secret undercover mission - she meets 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.
Highly entertaining
—— John Lanchester , Guardian Books of the YearGloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny
—— Irish TimesSweet Tooth takes the expectations and tropes of the Cold War thriller and ratchets up the suspense, while turning it into something else... A well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream
—— IndependentSublime...impressive...rich and enjoyable
—— Financial TimesRiveting... Delicious... Gripping
—— GuardianA brilliant portrayal of 1970s Britain at its absolute worst… But it's also a gripping spy novel with some characteristic McEwan twists toward the end
—— Mail on SundayA web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal... Acute, witty...winningly cunning
—— Sunday TimesPlayful, comic... This is a great big Russian doll of a novel, and in its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure...exerts a keen emotional pull
—— ObserverMcEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self
—— GQFans of Ian McEwan should rejoice with the arrival of this novel... An extraordinary, irresistible work of fiction
—— Sunday Business PostOne of the most hotly anticipated novels of the year...it's brilliant
—— Sunday Business PostI loved it. It reminded me of his most successful novel, Atonement
—— Harpers Bazaar OnlineIan McEwan proves he’s still the master penman with his twelfth novel
—— GraziaEnthralling, beguiling and totally addictive from the first page to the last… McEwan’s sense of time and place is authentic with his trademark attention to details of the social history of the period
—— Bristol MagazineMcEwan’s prose is controlled, his observation forensic as ever... McEwan carries us with irresistible momentum to a surprise ending
—— Maggie Ferguson , Intelligent LifeGripping
—— Evening Standard ES MagazineFull of ideas
—— Claire Allfree , MetroDazzling
—— EssentialsFans of Ian McEwan should rejoice with this arrival of this novel, because Sweet Tooth is McEwan's finest work since 2001's Atonement
—— Kevin Power , Sunday Business PostGiven McEwan’s ability to make riveting fiction out of English politics (not easy), it would be hard to imagine anyone better equipped to write such a story... Delicious... Gripping
—— James Lasdun , GuardianHis assumption of a female persona is pitch-perfect
—— Michael Arditti , Daily MailHad McEwan, through Serena’s benefit of hindsight in narrating her life, planted the clues? Let every reader have the pleasure of finding out
—— Ion Trewin , Sunday ExpressAn artful game of distortion... Clever handling
—— Anthony Quinn , Mail on SundayA curious piece of autobiographical fiction
—— David Sexton , Evening StandardA wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in... This is ultimately a book about writing, wordplay and knowingness
—— Catherine Taylor , Sunday TelegraphNo contemporary novelist is more enthralled by what goes on inside the human skull than Ian McEwan... Sweet Tooth, which juxtaposes contrasting casts of mind, reminds you that, as well as intelligence, the intelligence service fascinates McEwan... Always excellent at conjuring up places and periods on the cusp of dramatic change... McEwan atmospherically resurrects the strife-ridden Britain of 1972 -73... Similarities and contrasts between the mentality and mind games of the secret service and those of the creative writer are increasingly brought to the fore. Doubling back and forth across genre boundaries, Sweet Tooth takes risks: narrative loiterings and twists whose purpose isn’t at first apparent, a payoff that is long delayed. But – ideally read more than once – this acute, witty novel is a winningly cunning addition to McEwan’s fictional surveys of intelligence
—— Peter Kemp , Sunday TimeMust read... Intrigue, love and mutual betrayal by a master of the art
—— The LadyThe great thing about McEwan is that, despite his success, he continues to work hard, producing ever more accessible and entertaining stories
—— Henry Sutton , Daily MirrorCarefully researched
—— John Scarlett , Daily TelegraphMcEwan, as always, presents an engaging narrator... The plot is fantastic... McEwan plays with the readers expectations, and surpasses them all with a fabulous ending that makes me itch to re-read this superb novel all over again. Sweet Tooth marks another triumph for a brilliant British author
—— Bookgeeks.co.ukA pleasing, tricksy beast with a subsumed sense of metatextuality likely to be pleasing to his fans
—— BookmunchAdroitly done...highly diverting
—— D.J. Taylor , Literary ReviewA triumphant shedding of genre limitations
—— Adam Mars-Jones , London Review of BooksThis most cunning of authors entertains and manipulates his readers. Sweet Tooth is a masterclass in the art of fiction
—— Paul Sidey , Book OxygenIan McEwan is getting better and better… Supremely tense, intellectually sharp, and honed as hell
—— William Leith , Evening StandardMcEwan’ssmoothly contrived thriller hightails between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in
—— Sunday Telegraph SevenAn expertly crafted thriller written with a bucketload of suspense and wit
—— Hannah Britt , Daily ExpressAs richly textured as anything Ian McEwan has written
—— MaiBrilliantly cunning… It’s a story of love, betrayal and duplicity, with the most startling deception reserved for the final pages
—— Mail on Sunday (You)Playful, clever, knowing and full of stories
—— Absolutely ChelseaSupremely tense, intellectually sharp, and honed as hell
—— William Leith , ScotsmanBeyond virtuoso twists and turns, McEwan lays out the foreign landscape of 40 years ago – from smoky pubs to fuming punditry – with wry, affectionate panache
—— Boyd Tonkin , iTricksy, but satisfying
—— Justin Cartwright , ObserverThe sense of narrative purpose exerts its pull from the first
—— John Mullan , Guardian