So Clever

Can you imagine reading a full-length novel, and only at the very end do you understand what the text you’ve been reading really is?  And when we gather that knowledge in the last few pages, we can then deduce the fates of the two main characters without having to be explicitly told. And we also then understand some of the 'weaknesses' that we'd encountered in the book along the way.  It really is astonishingly clever.  I didn’t see it coming, and I was grinning for quite a while after finishing the book.  In retrospect it seems a little unlikely, but it’s just so much fun, who cares?

Ian McEwan brings it off in his latest novel, ‘Sweet Tooth’.  It’s a tale of some pretty tame British domestic espionage in the 70’s.  He does manage to evoke the time very nicely.  There are undoubtedly many specifically British references (especially political and literary) that I missed, but I got enough to remember how those times felt. The writing is slick and professional without calling undue attention to itself.

‘Sweet Tooth’ is part spy novel, part love story, part commentary on what it means to write fiction.  There’s a good dose of autobiography: one of the main characters is clearly a stand-in for McEwan himself.  I’m in no position to judge the extent of truthful correspondence to his own life.  And yes it’s another work of fiction in part about fiction itself.  We do seem to be a bit stuck on that these days.  So many writers have become self-conscious and feel the need to write about themselves writing, all within the boundaries of more-or-less traditional fiction.  Here there's just a hint of self-referential dizziness, and it’s annoyingly indulgent in a few places.  About two-thirds of the way through I got mildly discouraged.  The plot was starting to bog down and I wondered where all this was going.  But the ending makes it all worthwhile.  I don’t know another book quite like it.