Restless - William Boyd : Review

A very modern spy novel, Restless won William Boyd the Costa Novel Award in 2006. Set across two time frames, it tells the story of a young woman recruited as a British Spy during the Second World War and the consequences of her actions as she relates her hidden past to her twenty something daughter in seventies Oxford. Switching between the past and the literary present, we learn more about the relationship between mother (Sally/ 

Eva Delectorskaya) and daughter (Ruth Gilmartin) as well as the complicated web of history they find themselves in.

Eva Delectroskaya is approached shortly after her beloved brother’s death by a British spy looking to utilise her international childhood and language skills in the upcoming war effort against Germany. Jump forward to 1976 to find Eva living a quiet life under the name of Sally Gilmartin, with no one, not even her daughter, knowing anything about her past life. Ruth is more than a little surprised to be handed a first hand account, a chapter at a time, of her mother’s past. Slowly, details unfold of the schemes and plots that Eva/Sally was involved in as it becomes apparent that her past is coming back to haunt her.

Meanwhile, Ruth has been struggling with the fallout of her father’s sudden death which led her to flee to a progressive academic life in Germany and an affair with a married man that resulted in the birth of her son, Jochen. Stuck between writing a PHD on a subject she’s not very interested in and teaching English to foreign students to make ends meet, Ruth is pulled from her now boring existence into her mother’s intriguing past.

For a novel with such a complex plotlines, it’s a surprisingly easy read. It would make an excellent beach read.  There’s a romantic sub-plot between Eva and the enigmatic man who recruited her, Romer, but above all else this is a spy novel, one that asks its readers to question the nature of trust and the motives of all the characters  found within it. The momentum of the story is fast: Ruth and in turn the reader, is exposed to revelation after revelation as Sally/Eva casually presents her with the next chapters in her story. Rather than disrupting the narrative flow, the choice to alternate the storylines by chapter aids in unravelling the complexities of Eva’s story. The much more sedate and mundane aspects of Ruth’s life allow a little breathing space from the intrigue and rich detail and often Ruth’s reactions to the latest chapter of her mother’s story help the reader tease out all of the important details which the latest instalment has revealed. This can sometimes lead to the Ruth story arc being overshadowed, despite having an interesting sub-plot about German political intrigue which could have been developed further. It’s a shame that all the intricacies of Ruth’s story suffer as a result, but Restless is Eva’s, not Ruth’s story and consequently, the main focus of attention is turned to her.

A vastly entertaining read, Boyd keeps his readers on the edge of their seats in anticipation as he cleverly unravels events. The pacing throughout is flawless and building the plot around lesser known historical details of the activities of the British Secret Service before and during the Second World War adds an exciting twist to a time period and subject matter which has been used time and again.