Published in 2012, Ian McEwan’s twelfth novel,

, set in London and Brighton in 1972-74, is, under the guise of a spy thriller and a love story, a self-reflexive narrative. McEwan himself terms

a “muted and distorted autobiography” (Cooke), since aspects of his own education and early literary career have been revisited and assigned to one of the major characters, young novelist Tom Haley, resulting in “a weirdly refracted fictional autobiography” (Stossel). Foregrounding the artificiality inherent in the creative acts of producing and consuming literature,

questions expectations of “naive realism” and insists that the author is a “double agent” (65-6). As befits a thriller, vigilance is required since clues are offered throughout the…

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Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "Sweet Tooth". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 October 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34688, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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