Restless: A Novel (ISBN 1596912367)

Outstanding -- But Not a Genre Spy Novel:
William Boyd's latest novel, "Restless," is an exceptional and wholly brilliant literary work on the theme of deception. It is also a compelling thriller, an intricate spy novel, and a fascinating work of historical fiction that uncovers little-known and embarrassing realities about the true relationship between Great Britain and the United States in the years immediately preceding the latter's entry into World War II. Don't pick up this book if you are looking for a genre-type spy novel. This is definitely not that type of book. This is an historically based literary novel concerning British espionage against the United States in three years leading up to Pearl Harbor. If that appeals to you, you won't be disappointed. This book gets my highest recommendation, and is certainly one of the best books I've read all year. The story concerns two women, Sally Gilmartin, a seemingly ordinary aging British widow, and her daughter Ruth, a twenty-eight-year-old single mother. Ruth has a flat in Oxford and her mother lives in a cottage not too far away in the outlying rural district of Oxfordshire. Ruth is an Oxford graduate student trying to finish her Ph.D. thesis while earning a living teaching English to foreigners. As the novel opens, Ruth is worried about her mother: she seems constantly restless and is showing increasing signs of paranoia. Eventually, the mother divulges the reason for her persistent state of unease: she suspects that someone is out to kill her. In explanation, the mother gives the daughter the first chapter of a biography entitled "The Story of Eva Delectorskaya," then she shocks her daughter even more by admitting that the story is, in fact, her own autobiography. Sally Gilmartin was the British spy Eva Delectorskaya, and she's been on the run and in hiding for the past 35 years. Now she fears that someone has found her out and plans to kill her. For the rest of the novel, the chapters alternate between Sally's story of her life as a British spy from 1939 to 1942, and the ongoing story of Ruth during the unusually hot British summer of 1976. Sally doles out the chapters of her life as a spy in bits and pieces over the course of a few months. While Ruth fearfully waits for each new installment of her mother's harrowing tale, she not only has a hard time coming to grips with the reality of her mother's past, but also lives through her own summer of shady happenings. Unintentionally, Ruth becomes involved with political activists and starts to experience her own restlessness and paranoia--deceptions build upon deceptions. Eventually, the two stories come together in an exciting and totally unpredictable denouement. The ending is exceptionally clever! You'll be thinking about the twists and turns of this ending long after you've finished the last page. In particular, you'll be thinking about the nature of deception...even deception between mother and daughter. Throughout the novel, Boyd's message is clear: deception is dehumanizing, and if the business of spies is deception, then the price they pay is to live in a world without trust. "Restless" won the 2006 Costa Novel Award, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United Kingdom, recognizing the best novel of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland. This was the first novel I've had the pleasure of reading by William Boyd. I am pleased to see that he's written nine other novels, including many award winners. I plan to read a lot more by William Boyd in the coming year.

Part historical novel, part spy thriller - great story!:
This book was phenomenal. I started it at 3 o' clock one afternoon and just read it straight through, skipping dinner until I finished it. Ruth Gilmartin is a graduate student in history at Oxford, 28-year old single mother of a three-year old son. One hot Saturday in the summer of 1976 her world is turned upside down when her mother reveals that her identity as Sally Gilmartin (nee Fairchild) is an elaborately constructed fabrication. Turns out that Sally is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigre recruited to the British Secret Service in 1939, after the murder of her brother, also a spy. Ruth's and Eva's stories unfold in alternating chapters until they finally converge in a climax that will keep you riveted. One slight problem is that Eva's story is way more interesting, so that the chapters devoted to Ruth feel padded: there are some fairly obvious red herrings and a subplot that ends up going nowhere. But these are very minor flaws. Terrific story, great characters, good writing - "Restless" delivers on all three levels. As other reviewers have pointed out, this book is a bit of a departure for Boyd - it's not quite his typical 'literary' novel. It's part historical novel, part spy thriller, executed with exceptional flair. Boyd is an extremely talented writer and this book surpasses even his previous excellent work. I highly recommend "Restless".

Needs more editing:
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.

An Unusual Spy Novel:
William Boyd's "Restless" is an unusual spy novel. The protagonist is a woman, Eva Delectorskaya, a multi-lingual Russian émigré recruited for the British Secret Service at the start of the Second World War in Europe in 1939. Through several changes of identity, she has become Sally Gilmarten, a widow living in an out-of-the-way cottage near a small English village called Middle Ashton. The book opens in the voice of Ruth, Sally's twenty-eight-year-old daughter, a single mother raising a bright little boy named Jochen. The year is 1976, and in alternating chapters, the reader learns of Ruth's life and loves as an Oxford University graduate student earning a livelihood tutoring various foreign businesspeople in English as a second language. The alternate chapters are the chapters of a memoir written by Sally in a third-person narrative, "The Story of Eva Delectorskaya." These chapters tell of Eva's recruitment after the murder of her brother, Kolia, also a British spy, her training in the craft of espionage, her early assignments and escapes from danger, and her posting to the United States, assigned to manipulate the media and build sentiment for the entry of the U. S. into the war as a British ally. Her final assignment involves a close brush with death, and the remaining chapters of the book deal with the circumstances of that encounter and the involvement of Ruth in the resolution of the mystery surrounding that incident. Like all good spy stories, "Restless" is replete with unexpected twists and turns, duplicitous motivations, a dangerous love affair, and a mystery that is not solved until the final chapter. What makes Restless unusual as a spy story is the intervening drama of Ruth's life as a single-mother graduate student in the 1970s. Boyd inhabits his female characters so well that these chapters seem more like a contemporary romance novel than a spy thriller - an uncommon mix. But he captures the spirit of the times, the newly liberated woman, the left-wing demonstrations of the seventies, even though he leaves many of the strands of this story unresolved, the reader sometimes wondering what purpose it served. He does an admirable job of portraying the intrigue of war and international politics of the early years of the Second World War, but the resolution of the final mystery is fuzzy in places and does not evoke that final "aha!" from the reader, the ultimate goal of the very best spy novels.

Interesting spy story:
I bought it thinking it was a mystery but the writer doesn't develop a suspensful story for most of the book. I would describe it as an interesting "tale of a spy" prior to the US entering World War Two.