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Restless: A Novel
Restless: A Novel
Restless: A Novel
Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

Restless: A Novel

Written by William Boyd

Narrated by Rosamund Pike

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone.


Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother's past—the mysterious death of Eva's beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth's help. William Boyd's Restless is a brilliant espionage audiobook and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is listening at its finest.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 3, 2006
ISBN9781427200204
Author

William Boyd

William Boyd is also the author of A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys War Prize and short-listed for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; Ordinary Thunderstorms; and Waiting for Sunrise, among other books. He lives in London.

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Reviews for Restless

Rating: 3.777656039211391 out of 5 stars
4/5

913 ratings63 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    grandmother reveals her secret life as a british spy in america
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In 1976 Sally Gilmartin discloses secrets about her origins to her daughter Ruth. Sally, once a Russian émigré named Eva Declectorskaya, became involved in the world of espionage during the war. She's been hiding in a quiet life since she escaped the group, and now over thirty years later fears that someone is watching her. Ruth had no idea of her mother's Russian background or the espionage, and wonders if her mother is losing her mind. The story alternates between Sally's intrepid, perilous story and Ruth's, a single mother, English tutor, and academic, living a lifestyle so ordinary that the difference is clearly startling. Boyd's plot sounds implausible, but as the story progresses it becomes credible. He maintains the pace right to the end. He also conveys both eras so skillfully that the reader can slip from one to the other with ease.Verbose authors should take note: Boyd covers an elaborate story and the well-drawn characters concisely, without waffling or padding, and leaves the reader feeling like they have just had more. Well written and very enjoyable.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Boyd's narrators all seem to have one thing in common - a uniquely conversational charm paired with a wonderful clarity of voice. Plus, they tend to get caught up right in the thick of things historically. That we become embroiled in these historical events is a tribute to Boyd's skill. I still think _Any Human Heart_ is his best book of the five I've read. Though an an exciting spy story, I kept waiting for one of the daughter's students or boarders to enter the plot in a more substantive fashion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Many things to like about this book. I am wary when serious novelists go slumming it in the genres and although I like William Boyd's work I was still suspicious. I don't think I'm giving too much away to say that it centres around a woman's reading of her mother's journals, which show her not to be the person her daughter thought her to be. The action switches between the daughter's time, the '70s, and the Second World War.It's very much a conventional novel but that isn't to say that it isn't ambitious. In particular Boyd for the most part pulls off the difficult trick of a man writing from a woman's perspective, or more accurately from two women's perspectives. It also has a curious quality of transparency, by which I mean that everything in it is entirely on the surface. There are no subtexts, no symbols, no large metaphors. At all times it is what it says it is. I still retain an image of the central character, still watching, always watching. [to expand on]
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm not sure if this was a re-read or not; or if I saw a tv adaptation of it or something; it felt very familiar throughout. Interesting and reasonably well written, with some far-fetched bits
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've read the book a few years ago and just had an opportunity to see the mini series on Netflix and both the book and movie are excellent. I do think reading the book first before the movie was a plus. It made the movie that much better to watch. I had to watch the whole mini series in one sitting which was around 3 or 4 hours long.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Not usually a fan of spy fiction but this was gripping - now looking forward to watching the DVD.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sally Fairchild Gilmartin reveals her true identity (Eva Delectorskaya) to her daughter Ruth when she believes her life is in danger more than a quarter century after her work as a spy for Great Britain. She believes her daughter is the only one who can help her track down the person to whom she reported back then. She was nearly killed while on a mission in New Mexico by a member of her own team who is still alive. I am not a huge fan of the espionage genre although I tolerate it. This one reads quickly. I think the modern element in the novel weakened the plot although the story would differ somewhat to achieve resolution without the modern story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This has been on my "read soon" shelf for eight years. It is by a good writer and is in my favourite genre, espionage; so why the delay?
    It was the BBC's fault, there was a faultless 3 hour adaptation starring Hayley Atwell, Charlotte Rampling and Michael Gambon, which has stayed near the front of my memory since being shown in 2012 (and I knew it was coming for a while before that).
    It is an excellent book, and filled in a few gaps in either my memory or the adaptation and I heartily recommend it and the film to everyone.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a four-star read for me. Set in 1939-41 and 1976, the main characters here are a mother who was a British spy as Europe goes to war, and her daughter, who is just being told about her mother's other life. Deception, disinformation, double agents, duplicity, deaths, drama and damn good story telling.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was a gripping listening. Ruth detects that her mother was a spy during WWII. Her mother is telling her the story who she was - who she became and who she now is piece by piece in letters. For Ruth it's like a new universe has been open and she sees her mother's life from a new angle. The story is mixed with faith in close people, betrayal of the same ones, fear of losing one's life and fight for a peaceful future. The story is told fast-paced and kept me breathless until the very end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Unintentionally read back to back books regarding women spies during wwII. Each totally different. I believe that I enjoyed Mr Boyds book better. Characters less likable but story not so much like a college student trying to fill 5000 words. I think it is most difficult for a man to write from a woman's point of view. The fact that Eva was able to pick her husband from multiple visits to bars was ... Laughable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    William Boyd's 2006 novel "Restless" is no ordinary espionage thriller. We can start with the title. That doesn't sound like a spy story. Certainly Robert Ludlum would never have chosen it for one of his books. Even John LeCarre, whose titles don't generally sound like espionage novels either, would have opted for something a little wordier.Then there's the fact that the story's two major characters are both women, a mother and a daughter. And, although it may be a story about World War II espionage, about half the action takes place in the 1970s, more than 30 years after the war is over.Finally, the most significant spying that takes place during the novel involves British agents operating in, of all places, the United States. In 1941, England is desperate for the U.S. to enter the war because they question whether they can defeat Germany, especially if Russia falls. The British spies try to find a way to persuade a reluctant Congress to declare war.Boyd's novel opens in 1976 when Sally Gilmartin, an Oxfordshire grandmother, reveals to her daughter, Ruth, that her real name is Eva Delectorskaya. Born in Russia, she was recruited by the British Secret Service and trained to be a spy. Ruth, a single mother, has never suspected a thing. Now, all these years later, Sally/Eva believes her life may be in grave danger, and she decides to go on the offensive, with her daughter's help.Back in 1941, when Eva was operating in the United States, she is nearly killed while on a mission in New Mexico. She believes she was betrayed by a member of her own team, who survives in 1976 and lives as a prominent member of British society. Eva, as Sally Gilmartin, has been in hiding for all these years. Now, remembering all those skills she learned decades before, she decides it's time to go back to work.The author maintains the same level of inventiveness throughout. If he never reaches the edge-of-your-seat excitement you may find in other thrillers, Boyd never gives his readers reason for thinking they have read something like this before or that they know what is going to happen next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of the best books I've ever read. As I read, I felt like I was in a film, observing the characters, following them through their lives. The only reason it doesn't get five stars is that the ending felt a little rushed, a little pat, a little disappointing. I wanted a dénouement to fit the pace and intrigue of the story. I suppose you could argue that it was an ending true to life. The main story takes place in extraordinary times, the surrounding story in less extraordinary times. And maybe because I enjoyed the book so much, I was reluctant for it to end. I would have preferred something more satisfying at the end, though, when all's said and done.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love a spy novel, especially when the kick-ass spy is a woman! Great back and forth drama -- a daughter reads her mother's journal, discovers she was a spy for the Brits during WWII, then tries to find out who's trying to kill her mother, 50 years later. The details about the mother's training to become a spy and her daring missions were fantastic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My first William Boyd book, picked up by chance, a cold war spy novel, British side of things, as they try to get the USA to join the fight early in WWII. Spy novels normally don't grip me. However, the heroine is a woman, the main characters are women, and they make the story...and they win. Interesting structure, with the daughter's contemporary exploits paralleling mother's fifty years earlier, well-paced, with a few side stories for distraction. All in all Boyd dragged me in. The super secret disinformation agency that was the focus of the story had me thinking of the media landscape of Twitter and Syrian opposition's wish to have the USA intervene. Quite a contemporary story, I thought. In the end it was Pearl Harbor that dragged the USA into WW II, but the spy operations seemed quite real and scary. A very good book that inclined me to look up a few more of Boyd's books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I definitely liked this book (Thanks Cassi!) but it wasn't amazing. I love reading about espionage and the history of WWII was great. Boyd did a great job of explaining lots of the skills and techniques that spies use and that was also interesting.

    HOWEVER, i loved reading Eva's story but Ruth's (horrible name, especially when the Middle Eastern guy calls her Root) story was a bore for the most part. I still always wanted to keep listening though!

    I thought the pencil part in the new Batman movie was badass but the pencil part in this book kicked a lot of ass too.

    As an audiobook I thought the narrator (who is a British actress from Die Another Day) was awesome...one of the best I've heard. The whole book is less than 10 hours which I appreciated. I think I'll read some more of Boyd's books.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the story of a female British spy during WWII, told in memoir form within the frame of a current day story about the former spy's daughter, who had no idea her mother was a spy until her mother decided to share her written memoir. At that point, the woman who was a spy feels her life is in danger, but I never felt that fear as a reader. The most interesting parts were about the training the mother underwent to become a spy, and her experiences as a spy. The framing story wasn't quite as interesting, no were the politic aspects that revolved around spying. Some of the other characters, especially those in the spy ring, were fascinating. I think I would have enjoyed the story more if it had not had the modern day frame.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I liked the story, but the whole mystery in the present day about who was supposedly tracking the mother just kind of fizzled out and the novel just ended. I was expecting more.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the story of a Russian woman who becomes a spy during the Second World War. Her story is that of Eva Delectorskaya, told in the third person in the form of a written account, given to Ruth Gilmartin, the daughter that knew nothing of her mother's past life. Ruth tells her story herself in 1976, living as a single mother in Oxford with her son, Jochen.From the blurb and the quotes on the book, I was expecting a story of intrigue, secrets and derring-do, but in that respect I found this book to be a bit of a damp squib. It didn't seem to be much of a thriller to me and the writing style never quite drew me in. I certainly never felt a sense of excitement at what I was reading, but having said that, I thought it had its good bits and once I got into my stride with it I did manage to race through it. Mixed feelings for me, but I suspect William Boyd's writing style isn't quite my thing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's 1976, and Ruth is about to discover that the woman she has always known as Sally Gilmartin, an ordinary British housewife and mother, actually started out her life as Eva Delectorskaya, Russian-born and eventually recruited by the British secret service just before the start of WWII. Ruth, who teaches English to foreign students and is a single mother to a little boy, has no idea why her own mother, who has been acting strangely lately, has suddenly decided to share all the secrets of her training and missions during the war in detailed manuscripts. The story alternates between the "present" of 1976 and Eva Delectorskaya's fascinating story. I listened to the audio version which included an interview with the author, who said that he made up all the details of how he imagined the secret service would operate. It hardly matters whether Boyd based himself on facts or not, because he obviously has a very active imagination, and the story he weaves together holds the reader in fascination from beginning to end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was attracted to this book because I saw it listed in a "Ten Best Spy Novels of All Time"; I had read many of the other books listed and agreed with their categorization, so.... I enjoyed "Restless, but I would not label it a "ten best". It tells the story of Eva, a spy, and her daughter, then and now. Then and now is separated roughly by the standard 30 years, and now is sometime in the mid-70's. The spy activity takes place during the WWII years. Eva is a raw recruit pressed into service because of her native skills (languages, intelligence, common sense) and the lack of other candidates, many of whom are being drafted into the armed services. The story goes back and forth between the two periods, and much of the "now" is focused on daughter Ruth, who is reading her mother's memoirs chapter by chapter, having no prior idea of her unusual past. Eva and her colleagues had been betrayed, and Eva was one of the few survivors, now hellbent on revealing who the double agent in her life was. I particularly enjoyed the chapters dealing with Eva and the rudimentary spycraft of the time; I had far less interest in Ruth and her life. Will I read the new Boyd book? Probably not.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a book about betrayal, both personal and political. Boyd shows how acts of betrayal can impact how their effects can last for years. He also outlines its corrosive effect on character and suggests how it can corrupt family relations. The story is compelling. The structure is somewhat intrusive at first, but it is necessary to give greater force to the conclusion, which is very satisfying.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's difficult to say if this is a really well written espionage novel, a very enjoyable WWII novel, or a very good novel about what it means to be human. Of course it is all three, so I guess I am just saying to be careful not to pigeon-hole this novel in one category! To share an illuminating quote from the book itself, "Maybe all great schemes are like that,' he said. 'Happenstance intersecting with received wisdom produces something entirely new and significant.' " A mother and daughter are trying to find ways to live their lives in some sort of genuine manner, and yet they must face the fact that no one is completely known to us. We all have secrets from one another. Yet on we go, and that is the point! Good read. I waver between three and four stars on this one......I think four because I definitely want to read more of Boyd's novels.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Believable novel of a woman recruited to spy and spread propoganda during the 2nd WW, intercut with a contemporary time when her daughter learns of her mother's role and helps to complete unfinished business.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great story, well drawn characters and as always with Boyd, beautifully written and paced.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very enjoyable and well written thriller
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Boyd at his marvellous best! This novel recounts a daughter's discovery of her mother's hidden history as a secret agent during the Second World War. Set in 1976, Ruth Gilmartin, a single mother teaching English as a foreign language to a motley selection of pupils to finance her PhD studies into the lead up to the 1923 Beerhall Putsch, believes her widowed mother to be just another housewife. However, as her mother starts to pass Ruth fragments of her memoirs it becomes clear that she had a completely different early life, that had never been revealed even to her late husband.Meanwhile some of Ruth's becomes suspicious of some of her own students, particularly once the police start watching her flat.Boyd's characteristically flamboyant prose is less evident here - a sparser tone helps preserve the sense of urgency, particularly in the episodes from Ruth's mother's memoirs.The plot never falters, and the characters are, as always with Boyd, eminently plausible.I first read this shortly after its publication and was enthralled then. Now. re-reading it less than five years later, I found that it had lost none of its capacity to excite.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Gripping plot - focusing on a recruit for SIS who works placing false intelligence in press outlets, first in Europe and then USA during early stages of the war. Split narrative with 1970's - which worked ok - but at times felt a little contrived. The ending was a little limp - but all in all a good read - but not a great one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Finally a spy novel I can understand! Usually they lose me.I recently saw some footage on the internet in which William Boyd stated that he doesn't necessarily believe in always writing about what you know. I'm glad, because as in this novel, he always finds unusual and intriguing settings for his books,and yet they always have an authentic feel, as though he knows all about them anyway.This one gets off to a great start with a superb put down of the fat guy in the lane. Some events take place in the 'present' but most of the action happens during WWII. Enough action to keep the story ticking along nicely, and events brought to a good present-day conclusion.