Having seen Ian McEwan interviewed on the Book Review
programme, I had heard him explain that the ending of Sweet Tooth would suggest
a whole different story and so I was bearing that in mind all the way through,
wondering which were the elements of plot or character that would shift around
in the final pages. It is a novel full of fictions and consideration of the
condition of the fictional. In a world of secret agents, literary types and
thorough outlines of the stories of one of its main characters who is a writer,
there are many layers of possibility.
But then McEwan also readily mixes into his fiction a large
helping of real people and events- the current affairs of the early 70’s, Ian
Hamilton, Martin Amis - which is thoroughly accurate. Having thought we were in
1976 because Roogalator were playing gigs in pubs, I find that, yes, he’s
right, Roogalator were formed in 1972 and obviously playing pub rock in 1973
when the novel is set. But the best bit of observation is probably Serena
Frome’s sister’s boyfriend and his crashingly dull devotion to cannabis,
he was doing that
inexcusable thing that men who liked cannabis tended to do, which was to go on
about it
used here to make Serena think he’s being deliberately
boring to get rid of her because he wants to be alone with her sister.
It’s a brilliantly done scene. It is Serena’s paranoia that
makes her think that.
And we are not delayed too long with explicit ruminations on literary theory, of passing interest as they are, like when Serena discusses her
reading of contemporary literature,
I wasn’t impressed by
those writers…who infiltrated their own pages as part of the cast, determined
to remind the poor reader that all the characters and even they themselves were
pure inventions and that there was a difference between fiction and life. Or,
to the contrary, to insist that life was a fiction anyway.
In the final chapter the story does fold back into itself
beautifully. One gradually sees what is happening and enjoys the way it turns
around. Our sympathies don’t change much, I don’t think, because the characters
have somehow inevitably been made so attractive. I immediately wondered if I’d
been impressed by a simple trick, one that other readers will find too easy to
foresee, but I’m not sure they will and it’s me that decides whether I liked it
or not. It’s at least as good as McEwan’s best work, in Atonement and Chesil Beach