COPY CHIEF

Ian McEwan is currently my favorite author. Granted, this title changes regularly, but after reading his latest novel, Sweet Tooth, I can give him that distinction.

Sweet Tooth follows Serena Frome, a recent graduate from Cambridge University recruited to MI5 in 1972. She gets tapped to participate in a program called “Sweet Tooth” designed to secretly fund authors to write anti-communist books. Serena’s task is to offer a grant to a talented up-and-coming writer, Tom Haley, and monitor his writings to ensure he is writing anti-communist literature without letting him know he is being funded by MI5. In the process, she falls in love and wonders how to tell him about her real life without destroying his trust. Sweet Tooth is a book for book-lovers. Serena devours literature of all genres and her love for Tom is inextricably tied up with her love of his work. Anyone who has ever loved a novel can understand the pull the literary world has over Serena, especially when she finds the world of espionage not quite as glamorous as she first imagined.

I am always hesitant to give a plot summary for anything McEwan writes, because the basic plot, spoilers not included, never seems to do his work justice. He is a complete master of the slow build, and simple, seemingly boring plots build to an emotional fever pitch in a genius way. The real reason McEwan is my favorite author of the moment is his ability to take my expectations and subvert them with his shocking endings.  I know that when I pick up one of his books I will not know what I am really dealing with until the last 50 pages or so of the work. His best-known novel, Atonement, is a great example of how McEwan totally twists a novel to make it something much smarter and more sophisticated than it appears at first glance (I won’t give it away for anyone who has not picked up the book or seen the equally excellent movie).

I have come to think of myself as something of a jaded reader. Three years into my English major and just under a decade of near-constant reading have gotten me to the point where things can rarely surprise me. I like to play this game with books where I try and call the ending within the first 100 pages. McEwan is one of those authors that makes me remember why I love reading in the first place. He shocks me, makes me cringe, makes me cry and makes me love his characters because they feel so human. His books are the types of books that I will find myself thinking about for days, weeks and months after I have finished them. They have a subtle way of sneaking up on me, and I find myself in awe of how just plain smart they are. They also have that rare ability to be incredibly enjoyable without making me feel like I am doing the literary equivalent of a junk food binge with my free reading. Anyone who has not had the pleasure of spending time in one of McEwan’s books on a cold Sunday afternoon needs to run to Walsh Library right this second.