Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth (Vintage, 2013) ****

Serena Frome is an intelligent, educated and cultivated person, who gets hired to join MI5 as the result of a love affair with her history teacher. She is confronted with two love stories that form the plot lines of the novel. The first one is with her former history teacher, who suddenly dumps her and disappears, the second one with a young and promising novelist who gets recruited by Serena to offer some counterforce against the communist influence in British literature.

McEwan is his own brilliant self. Through the very personal and emotional narrative by Serena, who sees and understands only half of what is happening, McEwan tells a tale of post-Cold War Britain and the place of literature and desinformation in global politics, while at the same keeping us captivated with a detective story about the mysterious disappearance of her former professor, and on top of this all some essential questions are asked about moral principles and ethics, as in who's on the good side of history and how far can an individual go to without being compromised, and even deeper: what if love and ethics collude?

The novel is - as can expected - carefully crafted, well-structured and very entertaining. Serena is real-life person, with her skills and flaws, uncertainties and strong character, some moral flexibility but with principles. And it is through the contradictions of her character that we can also perceive the different sides of our own world: its truth and deception, and apparent truths which had been lies and guaranteed lies which appear to have some truth in them.