Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #424572 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-03
• Released on: 2006-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

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.)
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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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From The Washington Post
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 widow, Sally Gilmartin, is an elaborate and long-sustained lie.

For starters, Sally Gilmartin isn't even British. She was born in Moscow and after the Russian Revolution immigrated to France with her father and brother. Her real name is Eva Delectorskaya. In 1939, she was recruited by the British Secret Service and sent to Edinburgh to train. There she perfected her accent, learned an impressive array of mnemonic skills and practiced eluding a six-person team of trained shadows. She put these talents to good use as a British spy during the early years of World War II. Her espionage work was kept meticulously secret. It was also occasionally harrowing.

In 1942, she gave up her intelligence career and returned to Britain, where she married, settled down in Middle Aston and gave birth to Ruth. From this point on, she led an altogether unexceptional life. We learn of the surprising details of Eva's covert past, as Ruth does, in the form of a manuscript that Eva has prepared for her daughter. This manuscript forms half of Restless. The other half is narrated by Ruth Gilmartin and takes place in Oxford in the summer of 1976.

Boyd's primary challenge in this novel is to make both story lines compelling, and, largely, he does. Eva's story is certainly the more eventful one. When we think of World War II British espionage, we expect Eva to prowl the secret corridors of Vichy France or Nazi-occupied Poland. But Boyd sends Eva to a more unexpected and ultimately more interesting destination: America. In upstate New York, Eva works for a group of spies tied to the British Security Coordination. The goal of the BSC is to plant pro-British propaganda in newspapers throughout the world to spur the U.S. government -- and a largely isolationist American population -- into fighting against the Germans. Wars, as we know all too well, are often set in motion on the basis of manipulated intelligence, and Boyd has drawn upon recently revealed historical documents that describe a British spy presence in America of surprising scale and manipulative power.

Of course, there's little in daughter Ruth's life of comparable danger and magnitude. But this doesn't mean that the alternating chapters about her are dull. For one thing, Ruth is an engaging and nicely realized presence. She has her own full existence: a young son, a messy romantic life, unwanted houseguests, a PhD dissertation to finish, a job teaching English as a second language that brings an interesting array of foreign nationals into her Oxford apartment. All these facets are rendered succinctly and skillfully. Perhaps more important, we recognize in Ruth a stubbornness and strength handed down from Eva, who, because of the veiled nature of her spy career, hasn't always been as tender or forthcoming a mother as Ruth would have liked.

This is Boyd's eighth novel and 11th book of fiction, and he has earned a deservedly enthusiastic critical and popular following in Britain and beyond. His characters are vivid and human. He weds the engaging personal lives of his characters to diverse and far-reaching episodes of 20th-century history in a way that feels simultaneously accurate and intimate.

But Restless doesn't have the depth and gravity of the very best spy literature. To reveal Eva's secret life in a self-penned (though expertly polished) manuscript is a somewhat creaky device, and Boyd doesn't always slow down long enough to articulate Eva's complex motivations for sacrificing her safety and integrity for a country not even her own. Still, Restless is a gripping and smartly crafted spy thriller set against a fascinating and largely hidden episode in U.S.-British relations. By this measure, the book is an absorbing success.

Reviewed by John Dalton
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

One of his best
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.

British Spy Novel --- Tops in Genre
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.

Fascinating fiction about little-known World War II spy efforts.
When Ruth, a single mother and teacher of English as a Second Language, goes to Middle Ashton to visit her mother, Sally Gilmartin, in 1976, she receives a surprise. When Ruth is ready to go home, Sally gives her a folder entitled _The Story of Eva Delectorskaya_. Ruth has never heard of Eva--until her mother stuns her by announcing, "I am Eva Delectorskaya." Sally believes that someone is trying to kill her, and she wants Ruth to help her find Lucas Romer, her former boss in a British spy agency, during World War II.

The novel which ensues from the additional folders Eva gives to Ruth alternates between Ruth's life in the 1970s and the life of Eva Delectorskaya from 1939 through 1942. A Russian émigré to Paris, Eva is recruited by British intelligence, and once she has been trained (and has removed all traces of a foreign accent from her voice), she is sent to Belgium, where she works for Agence d'Information Nadal, a front organization which plants disinformation which the allies hope the Germans will accept as truth. Later she goes to Holland with Lucas Romer, her boss, and eventually to Manhattan.

Ruth's life, far more plebeian than Eve's, revolves around her teaching of foreign students, her care for her son, her friendship with Hamid Kazemi, an Iranian student and engineer, and her involvement in activist politics. When Ruth succeeds in locating Lucas Romer, the two story lines come together in a grand climax.

Always a master of narrative pacing, Boyd keeps the story moving smartly, though Eve's story is far more interesting and more involving than Ruth's. His ability to recreate the atmosphere of Europe and the US in 1942 makes for lively reading as he explores some of the lesser known intrigues by British intelligence. Boyd has often made use of diaries and journals to advance his plots, and this formula works as the reader becomes fascinated by Eve's complex life as a spy. Unfortunately, the characters themselves are not very complex, and as a result, the reader remains at arm's length from the action. With its unusual plot twists and its focus on British spy activity within the US, however, the novel moves quickly and is fun to read. n Mary Whipple