Ian McEwan tells Jon Stock about the pleasure of writing a spy novel with a twist – and why he believes it’s high time John le Carré won the Booker Prize.
Schlagwort-Archive: Ian McEwan
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Ian McEwan’s storytelling at its best is a slow burn with a deliciously unexpected grand conflagration — taking the quiet life of a somewhat-flawed protagonist and throwing it into violent disarray with a few bad decisions and sadistic twists.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Unless their protagonists are of the unflappable James Bond mold, novels of the spy genre often feature idealistic and empathic characters becoming cynical and emotionally jaded after one bout too many with a cruel and pitiless world.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Ever since he evolved out of producing what he describes as ‘staring-at-the-wall’ fiction, Ian McEwan has become England’s premier documentarian, the chief recorder of her near past in novelistic form.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Ian McEwan’s coy new novel, “Sweet Tooth,” begins with an intriguing confession from the narrator: “My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost 40 years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British security service.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
On the inside cover of Ian McEwan’s 13th full-length book, Peter Kemp of the Sunday Times declares him “the supreme novelist of his generation”. Indeed, so revered is McEwan among the chattering classes.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
McEwan’s latest novel may be set in 1972, with the cold war shuffling through its final lacklustre phase, but it could not be more different in tone or intent from “The Innocent”. Where that novel felt stark and dirty, “Sweet Tooth” is playful, comic, preposterous.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Literary criticism, as a rule, does not sell. Spy novels, as a rule, do. In “Sweet Tooth”, Ian McEwan writes the former as the latter, and it works terrifically well.The spy and the critic are both Serena Frome, a Cambridge-educated mathematician.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
“Sweet Tooth” is a clever book — ostensibly about spying, yet really about writers and the alchemy of fiction. But it is also curiously forgettable. What it lacks is not so much an animating spirit, as a heart.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
“All novels are spy novels,” Ian McEwan was recently quoted as saying, “as all writers are spies.” His new book is a genial, if flawed, foray into John le Carré territory – a wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
“Sweet Tooth”, as expected, is a well-crafted pleasure to read, its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream. One feels at the end that it is the prelude for a film script, with all the actors already cast, and its final question a foregone conclusion.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
A reliable pleasure in Ian McEwan’s work has always been the brilliance of his openings. Whether he’s aiming for the big set-piece or something more like the casual stealth of the couple’s afternoon awakening, his tales cast their spells quickly and irresistibly.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Ian McEwan knew that one day he would write about the decade in which he came of age, and says that his new book – a spy thriller set in the 70s – can also be read as “a muted and distorted autobiography”.