Sweet Tooth

Locations
Call Number: BOCD Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	BOCD Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Compact discs.
Unabridged.
Read by Juliet Stevenson.
Britain, 1972. Serna Frome, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a "secret mission" which 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?

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

me submitted by nicenora2371 on July 12, 2013, 6:14pm i think this story is fiction

The Spy Who Loved Him submitted by camelsamba on August 22, 2019, 10:51pm I don’t remember what led me to this book, but i was expecting some traditional cold-war espionage ala early Le Carre. This was not that book.

On the surface, it’s a story about a girl of middling talent who gets pushed to study maths at an Oxbridge college when she’d rather study literature. Next she ends up in an affair with a professor who grooms her for a job in MI-5. Since it’s 1972 young women aren’t given much authority but she does end up as part of a case that appeals to her love of contemporary fiction. The intelligence service wants authors to write pieces that will make the public love Western Capitalism and scorn communism, but without knowing they're being funded as propaganda. (Based on true events.) One complication: Serena ends up "in love" with her mark. But can you really be in love if you don't reveal your true self, or (more simply) even your job? Of course there's a much deeper story line about "betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self" - normally that kind of thing would go over my head (I'm more of a Serena than someone with a first in literature) but the twist in the final chapter drives home the point.

This isn't a spy novel. It's not a romance. It's literary fiction.