My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoyed Sweet Tooth‘s insight into ’60s and ’70s British life more than I did any of the characters, who I honestly didn’t care about all that much. It happens to me a lot, enjoying the setting and background more than the actual story, and it happens to me not only with books, but also with movies, games, sometimes even with people. Often I feel as if everything else apart from the protagonists, the setting, the situations, the world events taking place somewhere unseen and the emotional backdrop are the real centrepieces of a story. Here, it wasn’t Serena Plome or any of her lovers: it was MI5 and the world of domestic intelligence, the Cold War and the sides the public, or rather intellectuals, would pick in the “war of ideas”, be it consciously or subconsciously. Or somewhere in between.
Yes, I definitely enjoyed being transported to that era as a little observer; an era when a lot of things were the same as now, but they didn’t have phones or the internet. However, they did have a growing eco movement. They did have rock—in fact a lot of the rock stars we’re still idolising were alive back then, like my father often observes, who incidentally gifted me this book the Christmas before last; they did have marijuana, leftist movements and activists, they did have secret government services running the show in ways which will probably never be disclosed. A lot of what is still part of public discourse had its roots in that era. We think we’re being original, when we just haven’t done our homework. Am I ranting? I think I’m ranting.
What truly surprised me was the meta ending. I wasn’t expecting it to come from a story such as this, but then again, and this is probably another reason why I enjoyed it, Sweet Tooth was a book about books, authors and literature.
