At the end of Stephan Eirik Clark‘s debut novel, Sweetness #9, I felt like eating some organic, small-batch sauerkraut. Clark’s book cleverly and thoughtfully dissects the ethics of food testing and the pressures of the capitalist free market in the form of a sharp (and often laugh-out-loud funny) narrative told by flavor scientist, David Leveraux.
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| Kate’s rating: 4 out 5 stars |
Leveraux spent the early part of his career studying the effects of a new sweetener (Sweetness #9) on a batch of lab rats. He began to notice troubling traits in the rodents–apathy, aggressiveness, obesity, depression–but was encouraged to keep his mouth shut and his head down and just do his damn work. After all, the rats didn’t have cancer, did they?
David half-heartedly attempts to blow the whistle on the testing facility, but instead retreats into a troubled silence. He ends up leaving his job and moving on with his life, but is haunted by his decision to keep quiet about the effects of Sweetness #9. Eventually, the bright pink granules become the number one sweetener on the market and David begins to wonder if Sweetness #9 is contributing to America’s explosion of obesity, anxiety, and depression. David’s own family seems to mirror America’s troubles. His wife, Betty, struggles with her weight as she gulps down diet sodas and tries a myriad of new fitness programs; his son, Ernest, has a love affair with packaged food and red food coloring (adding it to everything he consumes, including his orange juice, which he calls a “bloody sunrise”); and his daughter, Priscilla, decides to rebel against her family’s food regimen and embraces veganism and all-natural, organic foods. Amidst David’s struggle to keep harmony in his family, Sweetness #9 once again creeps back into his life.
By the end of Clark’s novel, you’ll find yourself checking the labels of every packaged food item at the grocery store and wondering about the multi-syllabic ingredients listed there. Toeing the line between deadly serious and sarcastic, Sweetness #9 will have you laughing, cringing, and wondering how David Leveraux will untangle his messy life.
The answer? Something to do with small-batch, organic sauerkraut.
I give this book 4 stars out of 5. A thought-provoking, funny read that moved a bit too slowly in the middle and wrapped up a bit too hastily at the end. I look forward to Clark’s next novel and hope that he continues to write in the same inventive, bizarrely-humorous tone.
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.