This is my sixth
McEwan novel. Two I thought were magnificent (The Cement Garden and The Child
in Time), one was great but had a misleading title (in Atonement Briony doesn’t atone!), and three (Saturday, Amsterdam, and now Sweet
Tooth) were just very mediocre.
And why is Sweet Tooth mediocre? Because McEwan has
too much sympathy for an awful character (Serena is very much like Briony in Atonement), because it takes for
freaking ever to get to the actual core of the plot, because the actual lives
of interesting Cambridge spies (just ask Alan Bennett) unlike Serena’s are
actually, well, interesting, and most of all because – unsurprisingly –
everyone is again so posh that it gets to be really rather unnerving.
Like Briony,
Serena is completely self-centred, and even in this case McEwan seems to defend
her (the comments the narrator makes about the University of Sussex – where McEwan
himself studied – are absolutely awful and yet appear to be justified even when
they are unjustifiable). And the plot twist at the very end is just not that ground-breaking
or mind-blowing (plus, the letter that constitutes the final chapter is simply way
too long).
