Ian McEwan's latest novel, "Sweet Tooth," is a curious hybrid: part spy novel, part romance, it's really a work of fiction about fiction. The central character is Serena Frome, a Cambridge student recruited for Britain's domestic spy agency in 1972 by a professor and old MI5 hand. She joins the intelligence service, taking her place among the ranks of similarly well-born young women doing glorified secretarial work. There she is tapped for a mission with the code name Sweet Tooth to secretly funnel money to up-and-coming writers and intellectuals thought to hold a dim view of the Soviet Union.

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McEwan offers up fiction about fiction

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