Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is not the Ian McEwan of Enduring Love, The Innocent, On Chesil Beach, or even, despite its melodramatic and overwrought quality, Atonement, which was still enjoyable, if over-rated. This is the Ian McEwan that wrote the awful, lazy, self-indulgent Amsterdam (why did such a boring, bland piece of work get the Booker?) and Saturday. The characters are all equally unlikable and unbelievable. I could not relate to any of them, nor make sense of their actions, which seemed random and idiotic. The main character is thoroughly superficial, seeming to 'fall in love' with any man she sees in the most cliched ways. Literature is of course not meant to be 'real' nor should characters necessarily be 'likeable', but the reader should be able to suspend disbelief in order to be immersed in their world and taken along for the ride. This did not happen to me with Sweet Tooth, as the artificial, strained nature of the piece was apparent to me at all times. Most unbearable were the frequent digressions into 'meta' sections on writing, with snippets of the 'books in the book' quoted ad nauseam. Not only are these turgid, ridiculous pieces of prose, they are also a regurgitation of cliches on what it is to write, what we talk about when we talk about writing etc., you get the drift. This is self-indulgent stuff written for the critics as it were, and they were immensely boring passages for me. It seems that McEwan has attempted to be too clever by half with this novel, as instead of focusing on getting a message across through a powerful, robust narrative (i.e. telling a reasonable believable story with reasonable believable characters), he has tried to play around with heavy style effects and unsubtle irony, in order to produce a piece that is more about writing as a technique or practice, than about the pleasure of a story. That is why Sweet Tooth will leave the saccharine flavour of mendacious writing in your mouth, and is best avoided.