Book Review: Sweetness #9 by Stephan Eirik Clark

I got this book for free using netgalley but I promise all opinions are my very own! Sweetness #9
ISBN: 9780316278751

by Stephan Eirik Clark
Published by Little, Brown on August 19th 2014
Genres: Dystopian, Family Life, Fiction, Humorous, Literary, Satire
Pages: 352
Source: netgalley
Goodreads

Fast Food Nation meets The Corrections in the brilliant literary debut T.C. Boyle calls "funny and moving."

David Leveraux is an Apprentice Flavor Chemist at one of the world's leading flavor production houses. While testing Sweetness #9, he notices that the artificial sweetener causes unsettling side-effects in laboratory rats and monkeys. But with his career and family at risk, David keeps his suspicions to himself.

Years later, Sweetness #9 is America's most popular sweetener--and David's family is changing. His wife is gaining weight, his daughter is depressed, and his son has stopped using verbs. Is Sweetness #9 to blame, along with David's failure to stop it? Or are these just symptoms of the American condition?

An exciting literary debut, SWEETNESS #9 is a darkly comic, wildly imaginative investigation of whether what we eat makes us who we are.

I was browsing on NetGalley and saw this book and loved the blurb so I requested it and was approved for it.

I have to admit that the timing of this book is excellent. It seems the whole world is wanting grass-fed meat and is warning about the dangers of sweeteners. This book is a satire on this topic.

It starts out with two people working in an animal lab testing sweetness #9. David who is charge of the rats notices that they seem to be depressed and suicidal and stuff. He is fired after he points this out. He gets a job somewhere else and life goes on until his boss becomes sick and through a very twisting plot the truth about the sweetener comes out.

I know that the above does not seem like a lot but I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who has not read it. The plot twist keeps on coming. You think you know where the book is going but then PLOT TWIST!. The end of the book where the whole truth comes out will leave you with your jaw on the floor.

This is a fictional work but while reading I kept thinking what if this is REAL? The world created in this book is just like our own expect for this sweetener. And to think that today we use sweetener in almost everything. Most of us don’t give a second thought to the potential effects of sweeteners so it would be easy to imagine the scenarios in this book happening.

I loved David in this book. I could really relate to him. He is a fully fleshed out character and I found myself rooting for him. I think a lot of people can relate to him trying to do the right thing even when there so much gray area. Sometimes in life it is not clear what the right thing is and this book reflects that.

I also loved that the book portrayed the marriage and the raising kids in a more realistic light. So often in books we get the sanitized version of life. This book shows all the gritty side and the messes that can come up.

The plot of the book required no suspending reality. Like I said what happens in this book is so close to our own world that one can IMAGINE the events taking place. This is the kind of book that I like best.