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Author name: William Boyd

: Restless: A Novel
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781596912373
ISBN number: 1596912375
Label: Bloomsbury USA
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: May 29, 2007
Publishing house: Bloomsbury USA
Release Date: May 29, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 18620
Studio: Bloomsbury USA



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Product Description:
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.




Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - very interesting book
I could not not put this book down . It is a spy story with meanings on many levels. For example what do we really know about our friends and even our close relatives? What is truth and what is illusion? Appearances do not always reflect reality. A great writer. I highly recommend it. A great read.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Best Book I've Read in a Long Time
I found the life story of the main character (the mother) very interesting. It was hard to put down. Too bad the daughter was such a drippy, boring creature! But, that's how life is, sometimes.


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Good entertaining
I usually don't like spy or noir novels. But this one was cleverly elaborated. It is not Pulitzer, but nevertheless it is entertaining and you may want to give it a try, especially if you are looking to read something in the genre.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - 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 blue 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".





Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - 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 very 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 very 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.

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