This was the first William Boyd book that I ever read and I loved the Eva chapters. I found her to be complex, three-dimensional and her life as a spy gripping. By comparison, the Ruth chapters were a little staid, dull and led the reader down blind alleys. I couldn't wait to finish them to get bvack to the Eva storyline. Overall, a very good read but I would have enjoyed it better if it had just been a novel about Eva's life alone. ( )

Restless is a great read. I read most of it in one day as I could not put it down. It is very well written and based on an interesting slice of Anglo-American history, the early years of WWII when the US was resisting the pressure to join the war. The British Secret Service had an agency in the US where they shamelessly attempted to manipulate the press and discredit anti-war and pacifiest groups with the goal of shifting public sentiment in favour of the war.
Restless is not, however, a heavy war novel. It is the story of the training of a young woman, Eva Delectorskaya, as a spy for the British secret service and her various assignments which included working in the US.
In the broiling heat wave that was summer in 1976 in England, Sally Gilmartin (Eva) reveals her past to her daughter, Ruth, in various installments. An initially skeptical Ruth struggles to understand that her mother is a completely different person than the mother she knew. The English Sally Gilmartin was in fact a Russian emigre living in France who was recruited as a spy for Britain in 1939. Her story is a thrilling tale of adventure and intrigue but old secrets can be dangerous and Sally needs her daughter's help to finally put her past to rest.
I absolutely loved this book. ( )

Literary spy thrillers have become a new favorite genre of mine. RESTLESS by William Boyd is about as literary as they come. The writing has a certain lyrical rhythm to it, the sentences running long, strung together by commas, sort of like this one only longer. And Boyd loves to use words that evoke marvelous imagery, likes description such as that of a manor house "falling down, on its last woodwormed legs, giving up its parched ghost to entropy. Sagging tarpaulins covered the roof of the east wing, rusting scaffolding spoke of previous vain gestures at restoration and the soft yellow Cotswold stone of its walls came away in your hand like wet toast."

See what I mean?

In the "interminable hot summer of 1976, that summer when England reeled, gasping for breath, pole-axed by the unending heat," our protagonist, single mom Ruth Gilmartin, finds out that her mother isn't Sally Gilmartin of London at all, but a Russian emigre named Eva Delectorskaya (try saying that ten times fast). Eva was recruited by the British Secret Service in 1939, after her brother died working for them. Eva's brought into the intelligence fold by a mysterious man named Lucas Romer--a "swarthy" man "with dense eyebrows, uncurved,like two black horizontal dashes beneath his high forehead and above his eyes," who also has "very white, even teeth," which he occasionally bares in an intriguing smile.

Ruth's mother tells her about this. But not all at once. She spoons out the story one chapter at a time. And, in between, we get a chapter from Ruth's life. Needless to say, Ruth has a hard time believing any of this at first. She's got enough on her hands trying to raise her son, Jochen, without benefit of a partner, while working as an English tutor for foreign students attending Oxford University. And then other complications ensue. Ruth doesn't want to have to deal with her Mum going all dotty on her.

But Mum's not dotty. She's right as rain and this spy story is the truth (stranger than fiction, as they say). She continues to provide Ruth one chapter at a time--in order to work out the story's imperfections, she says--but of course it's a writer's trick. It's just Boyd saying, "Wait for it . . ."

And as each woman's tale unfolds, they eventually find past and present coming together. Ruth ends up getting pulled into her mother's narrative, so to speak, though for the most part they have separate stories, that run in interesting parallel ways.

The entire review can be read on my blog at http://thebookgrrl.blogspot.com/2009/... ( )

A good read. ( )

My new favorite author! Excellent double whammy as two stories are told intermingling at the end. Eva Electorskaya was a WWII spy, unbeknownst to her daughter, until her mother hands her her memoirs and tells her to read. She then goes about the task of finding the spy who betrayed her mother 35 years ago. Full of suspense, intrigue and a wonderful English writing style that will keep me looking for more of his books. ( )