Sweet Tooth
Ratings32
Average rating3.2
DNF at 10%.
Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.
On par with his last novel, Solar, this book is reasonably enjoyable but not as much so as some of his previous work.
Clever. There's a thin veneer of a spy story, but that's not really what this book is about. None of the characters are especially likeable, but they are all telling stories and some of the stories are about themselves. We know some of the stories are untrue, and others we wonder about. Even though I didn't like the characters at all (well, there was one marginal character I liked for his authenticity who was absent for most of the story), I wanted to know what was going to happen in their stories and what they would make of themselves.
I wasn't crazy about the characters themselves, but the stories within the story were better than the “story.” Knowing McEwan, that was done purposefully, which would give it a higher rating for me.
McEwan hits the nail on the head narrating as a female (seems to me as a male!) a tough thing to do indeed. An interesting plot with a few twists and turns keep you glued till the surprising end
I like the style of writing but couldn't tolerate the slow pace. A third of the way through this I just couldn't continue.
For the first 300 pages I thought I didn't like this book. And I still find the first 20 of the 22 chapters dull, McEwan's style not engaging, and the story not worth a novel at all. It was only in chapter 21 when I got somewhat attached to the characters and became curious of their fate, but in the final 22 I was thrilled. The ending is a pretty clever twist to an otherwise boring story.
I would go for 2,5 stars if I could, with the additional half star being a sign of my appreciation of McEwan's truly comprehensible explanation of the Monty Hall problem.