Restless [Paperback]

William Boyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2007

It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian emigree living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Ruth Gilmartin learns the true identity—and the WWII profession—of her aging mother, Sally Gilmartin, at the start of Boyd's elegant ninth novel (after Any Human Heart), Ruth is understandably surprised. Sally, née Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré living in Paris in 1939, was recruited as a spy by Lucas Romer, the head of a secretive propaganda group called British Security Coordination, to help get America into the war. This fascinating story is well told, but slightly undercut by Ruth's less-than-dramatic life as a single mother teaching English at Oxford while pursuing a graduate degree in history. Ruth's more pedestrian existence can't really compete with her mother's dramatic revelations. The contemporary narrative achieves a good deal more urgency when Ruth's mother recruits her to hunt down the reclusive, elusive Romer. But the real story is Eva/Sally's, a vividly drawn portrait of a minor figure in spydom caught up in the epic events leading up to WWII. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From The New Yorker

Boyd's ninth novel, an absorbing historical thriller, is loosely based on the history of a covert branch of British intelligence created to coax America into the Second World War. The story unfolds on parallel tracks as Sally Gilmartin, born Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigree recruited into the British Secret Service in 1939, reveals her clandestine past in an autobiography that she gives to her daughter, Ruth, a graduate student and single mother living a dull civilian life in Oxford in 1976. These installments give the narrative momentum (the accounts of Ruth's daily life drag, by contrast) as Eva describes the taciturn spy who recruited and trained her before becoming her lover; her secret propaganda work in New York; and the act of duplicity, almost deadly, that forced her to flee to England and live under an assumed identity. Ruth barely has time to process the shock of her mother's secret before she is swept into a dangerous game: finding her mother's betrayer before it's too late.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks (January 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747586209
• ISBN-13: 978-0747586203
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,367,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Boyd is the author of ten novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars British Spy Novel --- Tops in Genre, September 2, 2007

By 

Middle-aged Professor (NY'er living in Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Restless: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a spy novel, not a thriller, and there is a real difference between the two genres. Think John LeCarre and Graham Greene, not Robert Ludlum and Ken Follet. With the spy novel, you have the ever-so-slow peeling of layers, deeper characterizaion, a frequent sense of foreboding and, until all is revealed, some confusion. The thriller, in contrast, is the page-turning, up-all-night, action-packed adventure that you can't put down. After finishing a thriller, you are likely to say "where can I get another fix," but not to reflect on what you have just read, and if you try, you may not remember and, if you do, it may not make sense. With the spy novel, you may want to wait a while before reading another, but you will spend some time reflecting on what you've just read, and it provokes you in a more serious, literary way.

I like both genres but find it important to orient my expectations going in.

For the spy novel genre, Restless would have to rank among my favorites. In addition to the terrific writing, the likeable-but-far-from-perfect heroines and the World War II intrigue, the novel offers some additional pleasures.

First, it is quintissentially British. The book involves, among other things, a single mother raising her son, the world of Oxford academia, and all sorts of emotionally powerful events. These all come across with the British stoicism, stiff-upper-lipism and "no winging (whining)" ethic that make the book very different from an American treatment of the identical plot. Not better, or worse, just different and thus very interesting to the American reader. The cultural difference (accurately renedered I should say) is a fascinating sidelight for the American reader.

Second, the author employed heroines rather than heroes. I would be interested to hear from female readers, but I was very impressed with the author's ability to create characters of the opposite sex who seemed nonstereotyped, but true. There is nothing of "the weaker sex" to the heroines, but they are not at all the same as they would be if written as men. In short, they're real women (or at least seem so from my, male, perspective)in a genre that does not frequently offer that.

Third, the novel spends a great deal of time on the intrigue, spying and propoganda surrounding British efforts to persuade the United States to join World War II. In an interview, Boyd says that he mostly used his imagination in creating the spying, but it certainly seems realistic and oh so relevant today. The wheels-within-wheels manipulation of the media and public opinion and the "trust nobody" mantra say more about contemporary foreign affairs than many current nonfiction treatments, which themselves simply repeat the spin that interested actors have given the authors.

Enjoy.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of his best, October 9, 2006

By 

Newton Munnow "Newton Munnow" (Atlanta, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Restless: A Novel (Paperback)

Over the last twenty years, William Boyd has, for me, been among the most consistent writers of narrative fiction. There have been books that will stand the test of time (New Confessions) and ones that already seem dated (Stars and Bars), but Restless finds him in good form. Boyd, as flexible as ever, turns his attention to the spy genre. We are presented with a double narrative, mother and daughter. The plot is hampered by a slightly overwrought literary device, the mother doling out her diaries at intervals, conveniently allowing the author to flip back and forth in time. Still, Boyd remains a wonderful writer. His characters are incisive, full blooded and captivating, even the ones we're not supposed to like. Boyd, like McEwan, manages the perfect blend of literature and thriller and Restless reads very quickly. That alone is a reason to buy it, but add in the Paris of 1939, spymasters and double dealings and Boyd is on to another winner.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs more editing, February 1, 2008

By 

P. L. Petersen (San Ramon, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Restless: A Novel (Hardcover)

Restless: Two Stories in One

In Restless William Boyd gives us two stories in one: the stories of Ruth Gilmartin and Eva Delectorskaya. But sadly only one of the stories is fully developed. Ruth Gilmartin, a single mother, teaches English as a second language and lives in Oxford, England with her son Jochen. Her life gets complicated when her mother, Sally Gilmartin, gives Ruth her memoirs revealing herself as the British spy Eva Delectorskaya. Boyd structures the memoirs one chapter at a time into the novel. This results in alternating chapters of the two women's lives, with two viewpoints, two settings, and two time frames, the seventies and the forties. Ruth, along with the reader, becomes absorbed in her own mother's past. And what a Machiavellian past Eva had: a contrast to the routine existence Ruth lives.

Boyd's creative use of two storylines within one novel makes reading interesting. Eva's undercover story takes center stage. Each chapter ups the ante in violence and intrigue. Her entanglement with Lucas Romer, her boss, leads her to plant fake documents meant to encourage the U. S. to engage with the British in World War II. Boyd packs this thriller with mystery, drama, and devious manipulation, compelling the reader to search for answers. He builds a complicated plot for Eva's story, and withholds information as well as any mystery writer. By the time the story has played out he ties up all the pieces with finesse.

He is not as meticulous writing Ruth's story. He inserts plotlines and leaves them unfinished. What happened to Hamid's love for Ruth and his connection to the protests against the Shah, to Ludger, Ilse, and their connection to the Red Army? What about Detective Constable Frobisher? Why did Boyd build so many fascinating questions in Ruth's story and not resolve them? One writing theory is if the author puts a gun on the mantle in the first chapter, he better let the reader know why it was there by the last chapter. Boyd put too many guns on Ruth's mantle and we still don't know why in the last chapter he included them in the story. Though William Boyd is a talented writer, this careless oversight keeps the novel from being exceptional. Boyd needs to go back and edit.