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Restless: A Novel
by William Boyd
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9781596912373 
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Only 2 left in stock at $8.95!
Awards
2006 Costa Book Award winner
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone.
Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother's past — the mysterious death of Eva's beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth's help. Restless is a brilliant espionage audiobook and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is listening at its finest.
Review:
"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, ne Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian migr 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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Halfway through William Boyd's entertaining new novel, 'Restless,' Ruth Gilmartin, a single mother living in Oxford, England, muses to herself, 'People lead their real, most interesting lives under cover of secrecy.' She has good reason to let her thoughts stray in this direction: She's recently discovered that almost everything she knows about her mother, the handsome and spirited 65-year-old British... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)
Review:
"[Restless] is superbly written, has a hypnotic plot that unfolds in an intellectually interesting fashion, gives us compelling characters whose psychic twists and turns make them seem both real and fascinating...and combines all of these elements into one of the most smoothly readable novels of the year." Chicago Tribune
Review:
"The versatile Boyd, writing his first spy story, exhibits all the subtlety so lacking in standard-issue thrillers that clog the top of the best-seller lists. Boyd has inhabited female perspectives in earlier work, and does a laudatory job." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review:
"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 New Yorker
Review:
"[A]n unnerving examination of identity and duty, calculation and collusion. It is also a superior mother-daughter book, though probably not one that would play on Oprah....Restless is fraught with passion and pain — and painful comedy — but such interstices set it apart." Newsday
Review:
"[A] crackling spy thriller...[that] evoke[s] the atmosphere of wartime espionage....The pared-down style, clipped and understated, perfectly fits the sepia setting." Ben Macintyre, The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"Restless is one more example of Boydean variousness, as well as large talent....Boyd's special virtue is that whatever high-flying action he arranges for his protagonists...he doesn't scant their obstinate humanity." Boston Globe
Review:
"Boyd has penned a fine tale here....The story of Eva Delectorskaya provides a terrific portrait of a woman caught up in an event that changed the world — and her life — forever." San Francisco Chronicle
Review:
"Although Boyd, a deft and stylish storyteller, has delivered an enjoyable read, a skein of loose threads leaves a nagging sense of unfinished business. This is a novel that could be, and probably should be, more..." Los Angeles Times
Review:
"A bit light on action and intrigue, but a cool, collected effort." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"If an espionage thriller...can be called a cozy, this is it....A somewhat clumsy narrative enlivened by some expertly generated suspense." Booklist
Review:
"While some readers may be annoyed by the author's stylistic tics...others will enjoy this glimpse of wartime dirty tricks." Library Journal
Review:
"[An] espionage thriller and domestic drama by one of the very best prose stylists and storytellers in the English language." Atlantic Monthly
Synopsis:
Someone is trying to kill Sally Gilmartin. It is the summer of 1976, and the only person she can trust is her daughter, Ruth, a young single mother struggling with her own demons. Now Sally must tell her daughter the truth: She is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré recruited for the British Secret Service in 1939. Soon Ruth is drawn deeper into the astonishing events of her mother’s past, including her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward U.S. involvement in Second World War and her dangerous love affair with another spy. Ruth also discovers that her mother has one final assignment. This time, though, Eva can’t do it alone—she needs Ruth’s help. Full of tension and drama, emotion and history, this is storytelling at its finest.
About the Author
William Boyd is the author of eight novels, including A Good Man in Africa and Any Human Heart, three collections of short stories, and thirteen screenplays that have been filmed. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2006 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Novel Award, the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. He lives with his wife in London and southwest France.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
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Mick, September 19, 2008 (view all comments by Mick)
A terrific tale of WWII espionage, as a young Russian woman is taught the how-to's of being a spy, and possibly a counter-spy. It's entertaining, enlightening and an all around pleasure to read. It well deserves the awards that it has won.
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Marie, June 27, 2007 (view all comments by Marie)
An enjoyable read, Boyd ties together the complicated plot well. Ultimately, I was disappointed that I was unable to care very deeply about the characters, but the plot was intriguing enough to carry me to the end.
Boyd has clearly done his research into the pre-War II spy game and he made a good choice to intertwine life in 1970s Britain with the notion that history is not easily escaped. A straightforward telling of his tale wouldn't have been as effective.
Restless is smoothly written and well-played.
View all 2 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781596912373
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Subject:
- Espionage/Intrigue
- Subject:
- Thrillers
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Copyright:
- 2007
- Publication Date:
- May 29, 2007
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 324
- Dimensions:
- 8.26x5.52x.94 in. .72 lbs.
