We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books
At the
heart of Ian McEwan’s latest novel is a very simple conceit. Serena Frome, a
nice young woman fresh from Cambridge, is hired by MI5, Britain’s spy service.
This is in the early 1970s, so the Cold War is still on. At first, Serena has
little more than what amount to filing duties. Then one of her superiors gives
her a more interesting assignment, codenamed “Sweet Tooth”. Claiming to belong
to a cover organization that dispenses literary grants, she is to approach a
junior academic and writer of short-stories, T.H.(Tom) Haley , and offer him a
generous grant to write a novel.
As MI5
calculate it, it’s possible that Haley, who has penned the odd anti-communist
article, can be turned into a major anti-communist literary figure. Like other
artistic talents covertly funded by the organization, he could be a
counter-balance to all those left-ish literary figures who are too forgiving of
the Soviet Union, or who argue that there’s no practical difference between the
USSR and the Western Alliance.
Serena is
at first not too enthusiastic about the assignment, which seems small beer
compared with the mighty task of outwitting Soviet agents or pursuing
counter-terrorism against the Provisional IRA (a big concern of MI5 in the
early 1970s). But once she meets Haley, gets to know him, and gets to read his
work, she feels differently about him. In fact she falls in love with him.
And there
we have our very simple conceit – the degrees of deception the agent has to
maintain in order to carry out her task. It’s a case of love, duty and the
strong temptation to blow her own cover.
A number of
reviewers have already complained about the difficulty of trying to examine a
novel like this, without giving away the twists and surprises of its plot. Like
those reviewers, I respect the convention that one does not give spoilers on a
new novel. So I will offer no detailed synopsis beyond this set-up. Suffice it
to say that the novel has multiple examples of betrayal and broken confidences,
where espionage and personal feelings overlap. We soon learn not to be
surprised that people are not always what Serena takes them to be.
Beyond this
appearance-and-reality matter, McEwan has an added agenda. He wants to show his
literary cleverness. As is established in the opening pages, Serena is an avid
reader of novels. These are repeatedly referenced as she tells her own story in
the first person. Sharper readers are supposed to see how her reading not only
influences the way she sees the world, but also echoes the facts of her own
story.
Then there
is the device of having her read – and give detailed synopses of – Tom Haley’s
short stories as she undertakes Operation “Sweet Tooth”. One story is about a
man surrendering to a woman’s reckless love after she has mistaken him for
somebody else. Another has a man objectifying women to the point of being in
love with a mannequin. A third has a wife betraying a husband. Mistaken love,
exploitation, betrayal – yes, they are all meant to underscore Serena’s own
situation. And some of them are re-hashes of stories McEwan himself wrote in
earlier years. In fact, elements of Tom Haley are an autobiographical portrait
of McEwan. As a six-time nominee for the Booker Prize, and one-time winner,
McEwan also has some fun at the expense of literary awards. He name-checks some
of his literary friends.
Read as a
sub-Le Carre story, Sweet Tooth has
its points. Obviously part of McEwan’s inspiration was the “soft” Cold War, in
which both Soviet bloc and Western Alliance secret services tried to influence
covertly the literary and intellectual life of the West. The Encounter affair is referenced a number
of times – a modest, intelligent, liberal-left but anti-communist magazine,
which turned out to have accepted some CIA funding. There is some interest in
McEwan’s depiction of MI5 modi operandi and
recruitment procedures. In an early passage where Serena is being vetted, she
tells us how she gave the recruiters exactly those opinions the service found
acceptable:
“I spoke the language of a Times
leader, echoing patrician, thoughtful-sounding opinions that could hardly be
opposed. For example, when we arrived at the ‘permissive society’ I cited The
Times’s view that the sexual freedom of individuals had to be balanced
against the needs of children for security and love. Who could take a stand
against that? I was getting into my stride. Then there was my passion for
English history. Again [the MI5 recruiter] perked up. What in particular? The Glorious Revolution. Ah now, that
was very interesting indeed! And then, later, who was my intellectual hero? I
talked of Churchill, not as a politician but as an historian (I summarised the
‘incomparable’ account of Trafalgar), as the Nobel Laureate for Literature and
then as the watercolourist….” (Pg.35-36)
This is
almost an anthology of all the Tory prejudices that were then MI5’s
intellectual touchstones. At the same time, the early 1970s were a time when
the spy service was just beginning to recruit women and people with non-U
accents, such as Serena’s sometime friend Shirley. There’s even a passing
reference to a “Millie Trimingham”
(Pg.39), transparently Stella Rimington who was to become MI5’s director-general
in the 1990s.
Serena
narrates all this from the perspective of 40 years later – but here we have a
major problem. Men novelists can successfully adopt the voice of a woman; and
women novelists can successfully adopt the voice of a man. But I was never
wholly convinced of the reality of Serena. She seemed to have been neatly
concocted by McEwan to illustrate his intended lecture on the Relationship of
Life and Literature. In fact well before midway point I was irritated by the
thought that she reminded me of nothing so much as Ian Fleming’s unsuccessful
attempt to have a woman narrate his weakest James Bond yarn, The Spy Who Loved Me. (Incidentally, Ian
Fleming is specifically referenced late in Sweet
Tooth.)
A reason is
ultimately offered for some of the things I complain of here – but that’s one
of those things I can’t tell you lest I push the spoiler button.
I admit to
having a limited and bumpy relationship with McEwan’s novels. I enjoyed Enduring Love, despite its pervasive
sardonic tone; found On Chesil Beach an
interesting, if limited, reflection on defunct sexual mores; and believe Amsterdam to be the slightest, and
probably least worthy, novel ever to have won the Booker. (Gossip says it won
as compensation to McEwan for not winning with better novels in previous
years). I admit to not having read Atonement,
which some people rate McEwan’s best. (I read the “Dunkirk” section when it was
extracted in Granta, but apart from
that only saw the movie version.)
In the NZ Listener, Guy Somerset wrote a
largely negative review of Sweet Tooth,
eventually dismissing it as ”a career
novelist going through the motions”. [You can access his review on the Listener’s website.] A little harsh,
maybe, but I can see Somerset’s point. Sweet
Tooth is diverting enough while you are reading it. The author is an
erudite, well-read chap who produces a clean and readable prose. But you do not
finish it feeling you have been enlightened about the world or given insights
that you did not have before. You finish it thinking it was an intellectual
game, noting the glib trickiness of its ending and remarking “That was kinda clever”. Then you move on
to what you hope will be something more engaged and heartfelt.
Enraging footnote:
If you have the intention of reading Sweet
Tooth, DO NOT look up the article on it on Wikipedia. Not only does it give away the novel’s ending, but it
spoils all its other twists as well. I don’t mind committing those crimes when
I am discussing one of my “Something Old” choices that have been in circulation
for years, but it is very rough treatment indeed for a novel that is still hot
off the press.