Stephan Eirik Clark

This book was all over the place, and in serious need of some tightening up of the plot. I really wanted to like this book based on the blurb, but it didn't live up to the promise of the premise.
This fictional book, themed on the new trend of bashing processed foods, while pushing a healthier diet, is supposed to be of the dark humor variety, but somehow is just misses the target and verges on the boring and dull, rather than the sharp and witty.

It has its moments but these come mostly at the beginning and the end, making me wonder if this would have been better as a short story.
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Sweetness #9 by Stephan Eirik Clark is a highly recommended fictional novel that is ostensibly about a flavorist, but in reality begs us to question the true safety of the processed and chemically altered foods we eat.

Sweetness #9 begins in 1973 when David Leveraux accepts a job at a major company which is conducting animal testing on its soon to be released product: an artificial sweetner called Sweetness #9. David is excited about his beginning career, knowing that, hopefully, he will soon advance out of animal testing and move into breakfast cereals. But a kink happens when David notices the results of the consumption of Sweetness #9 on his rats... and a co-worker's primates. It seems that the artificial sweetner is causing a lot of harm for something that is going to be released on the market soon. When David tries to bring his concerns to the boss-men on the fifth floor, he's fired.

After struggling for a while, David is eventually offered another flavorist job at a different company. His life continues on, he has a family, and the story jumps into the nineties.

Clark does an excellent job raising questions about the safety of the manufacture products full of chemical additives we ingest on a regular basis, along with all the dyes, preservatives, etc. Written as a novel, it is at the heart of the matter, a social satire. All of the characters are likely showing signs of being poisoned by Sweetness #9 (or other additives). The prevalence of additives in almost everything we eat and drink (unless you are consuming all whole foods and organic) will certainly touch a nerve with most readers.

Alternately, since this is fiction, you will also wonder how many and exactly what facts have been exaggerated to make a point. He also keeps it humorous, even when tackling a serious question, which makes the novel a pleasure to read.

I found it rather amusing when Clark asked the question "Were we really a country that couldn't even cut its own cantaloupe anymore?" Okay, some people can't or won't take the time to cut their own fruit, but someone is cutting up the produce for them. (And some unnamed reviewer might just have a part time job doing just that, cutting up fruit and vegetables, that pays pretty good. So is it truly a sad commentary on our lives or simply consumerism at work?)

Sweetness #9 is entertaining, but not without a few problems. I guess my main problem was with the end when the plot seems to jump off onto a new tangent and toward a conspiracy theory. My qualms with the novel were nicely offset and balanced with Clark's superior writing ability and sense of the absurd in the juxtaposition of some of the facts and characters.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Little, Brown and Company via Netgalley for review purposes.

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