Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth is a 2012 novel by Ian McEwan. Set in the 1970s, it tells the story of one woman’s involvement with MI5 and the world of literature. Themes include the balance of power, navigating lies and deceit, and conditional versus unconditional acceptance.

Plot Summary

Serena Frome grows up in a small, uninteresting English city. In the 1960s, her mother encourages her to study mathematics at Cambridge University even though Serena (a keen reader) would rather study literature. She bows to her mother’s request and is one of the only women of her generation to study the subject at Cambridge. However, she struggles at university because she encounters people smarter than her for the first time and literature distracts her, a distraction which leads to a regular literary column in a friend’s student magazine. Her then-boyfriend introduces her to his tutor, an older historian named Tony Canning. Serena and Tony begin a long, secret affair. To hide from his wife, they spend weekends in his country cottage. He teaches her about politics which, as Serena discovers, is actually him grooming her for a position in the British intelligence organization, MI5. He schedules her an interview with the organization for the following September and she accepts because she does not know what else to do with her life.