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Apr 26, 2018gogo12127 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an American bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the flight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere. Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a “secret mission” that brings her into the literary world of 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. (Description slightly edited from the hardcover book flap, presumably a description provided by the publisher.) I decided to read this book after Daniel Silva's House of Spies, which I had read immediately preceding this book, briefly mentioned the book. This book is interesting and obviously well written; however, it's very “talky,” and nothing really happens. Wait. That's really not fair. Things do happen, except they're slow to develop, which probably why Sweet Tooth is such an interesting book and why Ian McEwan is such an interesting writer. I'd like to read some more of his books.