Restlessness (Restless - William Boyd)

Member Name: bluejules

Product:	Restless - William Boyd
Date:	23/08/07 (169 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good storyline

Disadvantages: A bit heavy in parts

This is another book from the Richard and Judy Book Club 2007. I read this book while I was on holiday; it is the third book that I have read from the Richard and Judy selection and the first I have read by William Boyd.

~ The Author ~

William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, on 7 March 1952. He has written many novels and won many awards. His other work includes, ‘An Ice-Cream War’, ‘A Good Man in Africa’ and ‘Brazzaville Beach’. Restless is his latest novel, published in 2006.

~ The Book ~

This novel is about a female spy in World War II. Eva Delectorskaya was recruited for the British Secret Service by an Englishman named Lucas Romer, when she was 28 years old. Eva received excellent training as a spy and worked with the British Secret Service in America during WWII.

After working for the British Secret Service, Eva moves to England and lives a life as a typical English woman named Sally Gilmartin. The book opens on a chapter written in first person from Ruth’s point of view. Ruth is Sally’s daughter. The end of this chapter sees Sally giving Ruth a memoir ‘The Story of Eva Delectorskaya.’ When Sally tells Ruth that she is Eva, Ruth is obviously very surprised, as she doesn’t know anything about this part of her mother’s history. The memoir is written in third person.

The chapters alternate between Eva and Ruth and this keeps the story going at a good pace. The book puts across that once a spy, always a spy an there is one final mission that Sally/Eva must carry out and for this she needs her daughters help…

I enjoyed reading about the characters in the 1940s during the war, as well as in the 1970s, in Ruth’s chapters. I felt that the characters weren’t developed as well as they could have been but I still empathised with them and enjoyed hearing about their lives. Ruth teaches English as a Foreign Language in Oxford and she lives with her young son, Jochen. I enjoyed reading about Ruth and how she felt about the discoveries she was making about her mother but most of it wasn’t compelling. In fact, I wasn’t really hooked until two-thirds of the way through (I did enjoy it from near the beginning though).

I enjoy reading books about life in WWI and WWII so I was looking forward to reading this book. I have to admit though that I don’t know much about the politics, especially in America, during WWII. I found this book was a little bit too heavy in parts, as at first I didn’t know if what I was reading was based on truth. It is well written though and is very believable. There were some pages I had to reread when I was reading Eva’s story, as it was all about the work of the British Secret Service and some parts were a little difficult to take in. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t think it is essential that you know about what happened in America before Pearl Harbour to enjoy this story because I still enjoyed the book overall.

Some parts of Eva’s story were very compelling and I enjoyed reading on to find out what was going to happen next. Sometimes, just as I was getting really into Eva’s story, I would be disappointed to see I was back to Ruth and have to wait to find out more. I also felt a bit like this when reading Ruth, though generally her chapters were shorter, so didn’t give much opportunity to really get hooked. A lot of Ruth’s chapters were about her life as a teacher and life with her son. I found these made a nice change but I didn’t really think they linked much to what was going with the main theme of the book, (apart from the fact that Ruth and Jochen are relatives of Eva.)

There were some aspects of the story, in Ruth’s chapters that I found slightly confusing but not for long. I think this is because it was set in 1976 and I don’t know a lot about what went on then either.

I think the title of the book was very appropriate but this isn't clear immediately.

~ Overall ~

The book started off a little bit slow but after I had read a few chapters, I was quite into it. As I have previously mentioned, it got really compelling towards the last third of the book, when I was beginning to guess what was going to happen (though I wasn’t always right!). I thought the ending was quite good and it wasn’t really what I was expecting, though thinking about what had happened previously I could see how it built up to this. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, though so far I prefer the other two books that I have read from the Richard and Judy Book Club. I have never read any of Boyd’s previous work so I cannot compare it to these. I would recommend this book and I may look out for some of Boyd’s other work.

I have given this book a mark out of 10 for four different elements of the book. I have then given it an overall rating. I will do this for each of the Richard and Judy Book Club books to see how they compare.

Story – 7/10
Style – 7/10
Characters – 7/10
Readability – 7/10

28/40 = 70%

~ Boring Stuff ~

RRP £7.99 (Amazon have it for £3.99)
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Summary: A good read