Sweet Tooth

Enthralling, beguiling and totally addictive from the first page to the last… McEwan’s sense of time and place is authentic with his trademark attention to details of the social history of the period

Bristol Magazine

A brilliant portrayal of 1970s Britain at its absolute worst… But it's also a gripping spy novel with some characteristic McEwan twists toward the end

Mail on Sunday

Riveting... Delicious... Gripping

Guardian

Highly entertaining

John Lanchester, Guardian Books of the Year

A web of spying, subterfuge, deceit and betrayal... Acute, witty...winningly cunning

Sunday Times

Gloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny

Irish Times

Sublime...impressive...rich and enjoyable

Financial Times

A brilliant portrayal of 1970s Britain at its absolute worst… But it's also a gripping spy novel with some characteristic McEwan twists toward the end

Mail on Sunday

Sweet Tooth takes the expectations and tropes of the Cold War thriller and ratchets up the suspense, while turning it into something else... A well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream

Independent

Playful, comic... This is a great big Russian doll of a novel, and in its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure...exerts a keen emotional pull

Observer

McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self

GQ

Fans of Ian McEwan should rejoice with the arrival of this novel... An extraordinary, irresistible work of fiction

Sunday Business Post

One of the most hotly anticipated novels of the year...it's brilliant

Sunday Business Post

I loved it. It reminded me of his most successful novel, Atonement

Harpers Bazaar Online

Ian McEwan proves he’s still the master penman with his twelfth novel

Grazia

Enthralling, beguiling and totally addictive from the first page to the last… McEwan’s sense of time and place is authentic with his trademark attention to details of the social history of the period

Bristol Magazine

McEwan’s prose is controlled, his observation forensic as ever... McEwan carries us with irresistible momentum to a surprise ending

Maggie Ferguson, Intelligent Life

Gripping

Evening Standard ES Magazine

Full of ideas

Claire Allfree, Metro

Dazzling

Essentials

Fans of Ian McEwan should rejoice with this arrival of this novel, because Sweet Tooth is McEwan's finest work since 2001's Atonement

Kevin Power, Sunday Business Post

Given McEwan’s ability to make riveting fiction out of English politics (not easy), it would be hard to imagine anyone better equipped to write such a story... Delicious... Gripping

James Lasdun, Guardian

His assumption of a female persona is pitch-perfect

Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

One of the most hotly anticipated novels of the year...it’s brilliant.

Sunday Business Post

A thoroughly clever novel...a sublime novel about novels, about writing them and reading them and the spying that goes on in doing both...very impressive...rich and enjoyable.

Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times

I loved it. It reminded me of his most successful novel, Atonement.

Harpers Bazaar Online

Ian McEwan proves he’s still the master penman with his twelfth novel.

Grazia

McEwan’s prose is controlled, his observation forensic as ever... McEwan carries us with irresistible momentum to a surprise ending.

Maggie Ferguson, Intelligent Life

Gripping.

Evening Standard ES Magazine

Full of ideas.

Claire Allfree, Metro

Dazzling.

Essentials

Fans of Ian McEwan should rejoice with this arrival of this novel, because Sweet Tooth is McEwan's finest work since 2001's Atonement.

Kevin Power, Sunday Business Post

Given McEwan’s ability to make riveting fiction out of English politics (not easy), it would be hard to imagine anyone better equipped to write such a story... Delicious... Gripping.

James Lasdun, Guardian

Gloriously readable and, at times, wickedly funny.

Arminta Wallace, Irish Times

His assumption of a female persona is pitch-perfect.

Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

Had McEwan, through Serena’s benefit of hindsight in narrating her life, planted the clues? Let every reader have the pleasure of finding out.

Ion Trewin, Sunday Express

What you see is not what you get, and the twist at the end reminds us of how many of this author’s works confound readers imaginations... A well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream.

Amanda Craig, Independent

An artful game of distortion... Clever handling.

Anthony Quinn, Mail on Sunday

A curious piece of autobiographical fiction.

David Sexton, Evening Standard

A wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in... This is ultimately a book about writing, wordplay and knowingness.

Catherine Taylor, Sunday Telegraph

No contemporary novelist is more enthralled by what goes on inside the human skull than Ian McEwan... Doubling back and forth across genre boundaries, Sweet Tooth takes risks...this acute, witty novel is a winningly cunning addition to McEwan’s fictional surveys of intelligence.

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Must read... Intrigue, love and mutual betrayal by a master of the art.

The Lady

The great thing about McEwan is that, despite his success, he continues to work hard, producing ever more accessible and entertaining stories.

Henry Sutton, Daily Mirror

Playful, comic... This is a great big Russian doll of a novel, and in its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure.

Julie Myerson, Observer

Carefully researched.

John Scarlett, Daily Telegraph

McEwan, as always, presents an engaging narrator... The plot is fantastic... McEwan plays with the readers expectations, and surpasses them all with a fabulous ending that makes me itch to re-read this superb novel all over again. Sweet Tooth marks another triumph for a brilliant British author.

Bookgeeks.co.uk

A pleasing, tricksy beast with a subsumed sense of metatextuality likely to be pleasing to his fans.

Bookmunch

Adroitly done...highly diverting.

D.J. Taylor, Literary Review

A triumphant shedding of genre limitations.

Adam Mars-Jones, London Review of Books

McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self.

GQ

This most cunning of authors entertains and manipulates his readers. Sweet Tooth is a masterclass in the art of fiction.

Paul Sidey, Book Oxygen

Parallels and contrasts between the mind-sets and mind games of espionage agents and writers of fiction are deftly teased out... acute, witty, cunningly crafted and full of fascinating autobiographical insights.

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Highly entertaining.

John Lanchester, Guardian

Simultaneously a tongue-in-cheek riff on his own early stories, a typically assured spy novel with a sting in the tail, and a meditation on the relationship between reader and writer.

Justine Jordan, Guardian

Cleverly metafictional.

Sam Leith, Prospect

Gave us another of his delightful posh-totty narrators, young Serena Frome, who is recruited into the intelligence services in the 1970s.

Kate Saunders, The Times

For most of its length, this account of a young woman's adventures in the British secret service of the 1970s reads like Le Carre-lite, but with McEwan nothing is ever quite as it seems and towards the end the reader is asked to re-examine what's gone before. Real-life friends and acquaintances of the author have walk-on parts, which you may find fascinating.

Irish Independent

The true subject of this smart and tricky novel, set inside a cold war espionage operation, is the border between make-believe and reality.

New York Times