Sweet Tooth

Locations
Call Number: Large Print Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Large Print 4-week checkout	Large Print Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Recruited into MI5 against a backdrop of the Cold War in 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome, a compulsive reader, is assigned to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer whose politics align with those of the government, a situation that is compromised when she falls in love with him.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The Spy Who Loved Him submitted by camelsamba on August 22, 2019, 10:53pm I don’t remember what led me to this book, but I think it was tracking down codes for the summer game. Based on the description, I was expecting some traditional cold-war espionage ala early Le Carre. This was not that book. It's not a spy novel. Despite numerous torrid affairs, it's not a romance. It's literary fiction (which apparently fans of this author would know to expect - needless to say, I was not familiar with him.)

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.