Sweet tooth mcewan6/7/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Not only does the supposed narrator (“beautiful and clever” Serena Frome) look back at an exotic period in politically tense London right after she graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Mathematics, but, better still, with words and phrases like “undoing,” “secret mission,” “ruined,” and “disgraced” appearing in the first paragraph and “MI5,” “recruiting,” “selfless cruelty,” “a journey with no hope of return” closing off the chapter, we’re enticed with the murky color scheme and sullied motivations popularized again last year with Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 bestseller, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. That beginning is engrossing because it’s so promissory. Adept at the genre, Ian McEwan opens à la John Banville in The Untouchable, with a wily operative recalling a scandalous distant past, though with notable differences: the narrator is female her bit role in minor Cold War machinations was short-lived and we see (and, over the novel’s twenty-two chapters, learn) virtually nothing of her circumstances after 1973. Page-turner thrillers of all stripes trade on nimbly accelerating plot mechanics and narrative sleights-of-hand that highlight the gap between what eventually transpires and what readers (and, often, the intrepid hero) initially believe or anticipate.Īt the onset, Sweet Tooth’s essence appears to be literary thriller. ![]()
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