[.ca] Restless (ISBN 0679314792)

"THE FINEST STORYTELLER OF HIS GENERATION":
British actress Rosamund Pike is probably best known for playing the gal who caught James Bond's eye in Die Another Day. While that performance certainly grabbed audience attention, she has numerous other noteworthy credits both on stage and in films. She does another star turn as she inhabits two narrative voices in the 9th novel by William Boyd. He's been called "The finest storyteller of his generation," and Restless again demonstrates how splendidly he can spin a tale. Set in Oxfordshire, England during 1976 our story opens with a bit of a shock - Sally Gilmartin gives her daughter, Ruth, a memoir she has penned. Ruth is amazed to learn that her mother is not at all who she believed her to be. In actuality, Sally Gilmartin is Eva Delectorskaya, A Russian who worked for the British Secret Service during World War II. Sally or Eva has guarded this secret well for almost 30 years. Now, she is revealing the truth about herself to her daughter not because she wishes to be open but because she fears for her life and Ruth is the one person in the world she believes she can trust. Ruth is not only astounded but disbelieving, wondering if her mother may be delusional at the onset of old age. Nonetheless, for her mother's sake she tries to find Romer the man who recruited Sally/Eva and with whom she had an affair. Restless is related in parallel stories, probably the most compelling are the accounts of Sally/Eva's enlistment, training, and experiences. Following the war she returns to England, adopts an identity and marries. She has every reason to believe her past is well behind her. Not so! Highly recommended. - Gail Cooke

A Terrific Literary Page Turner:
What a fun ride it was reading Restless by William Boyd. A bit of a mystery, a bit of an English spy story and a bit of a family drama all rolled into one. The book is broken into two narrative streams. The first is Ruth who teaches English to foreigners rather than finishing her doctorate. The second is the story of her mother Sally (real name Eva) who in fact, was a Russian who gets hooked into spying for the English immediately prior to and during World War II. The sections surrounding Ruth are fine and have the aura of a small town mystery story as she is surprised to learn about her mother's past, but it is really Eva's story we want to know about. Those sections crackle with a real sense of danger as Eva makes her way through the world of espionage while trusting no one. I liked the juxtaposition of Ruth's mundane, simple post-war life with the covert life of Eva, truly surviving only by her wits. I'll never look at a very sharp pencil the same way again. The story is clever, as are the historical twists and Boyd tells it in an engaging style. This is a something akin to a literary page turner and it's about the length that you could curl up one evening and devour whole.