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Mar 03, 2015JimLoter rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
A couple of other reviewers have noted that the review they were writing in their head while reading this novel was undermined by the final chapter in which all the cheesy pretensions and irritating literary devices are explained. I have to admit that as I nodded in agreement with them, I also realized how sad it is that I read novels now with some percentage of my attention given over to what I will write in my inevitable Goodreads review. So, the "review I was writing in my head" was going to focus on themes of deception and inauthenticity. It would have explored Serena's empty, self-delusional identity as she glides about with very little intention or ambition in almost utter mediocrity through university, a trite affair with a married professor, and into the dull, bureaucratic, linoleum-clad corridors of MI5 where she remains "a clerical officer of the lowest grade." Dull, but, as she says, "I really was pretty." Pretty Serena is then given a chance to shine: Operation Sweet Tooth, an ill-conceived and misguided propaganda project thought up by petty agents more concerned with getting a leg up on MI6 than making any real progress in the Cold War. She immediately and quite predictably falls for her "agent," Tom, a young writer who showed up on someone's radar as an anti-Communist conservative but who, in reality, is about as much an empty vessel as Serena. Serena spends a lot of time reading Tom's stories - and recapping them in irritatingly lengthy passages - before deciding that she's probably going to fall in love with him. After they meet and, predictably, fall in love, the two drink a lot of Chablis and have a lot of sex throughout the duller middle parts of the book until events transpire that cause Serena to reflect on the nature of deception. "I knew that before this love began to take its course, I would have to tell him about myself. And then the love would end. So I couldn’t tell him. But I had to." And there we would have had the central theme - Tom is in love with Serena, but Serena is not who he thinks she is. And without Tom, Serena is an anonymous government clerk with no personality. They need each other. If that had been it, this would have been a heartbreaking love story with the trappings of a spy novel and some weird, overly long, summaries of Tom's short stories. When the other shoe drops, it is not as expected and everything that was irritating and puzzling and ... just weird about the first 90% of the book suddenly makes sense.