Restless: A Novel

William Boyd

May 2009 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

A masterful, riveting espionage novel about a mother whose secret life as a WWII spy is at last revealed to her daughter. Full of tension and drama, emotion and history, this is storytelling at its finest by one of the great literary writers of his generation.

Now a major TV movie adaptation by The Sundance Channel and the BBC starring Michelle Dockery, Michael Gambon, Charlotte Rampling, Hayley Atwell and Rufus Sewell.

It is Paris, 1939. Twenty-eight year old Eva Delectorskaya is at the funeral of her beloved younger brother. Standing among her family and friends she notices a stranger. Lucas Romer is a patrician looking Englishman with a secretive air and a persuasive manner. He also has a mysterious connection to Kolia, Eva's murdered brother. Romer recruits Eva and soon she is traveling to Scotland to be trained as a spy and work for his underground network. After a successful covert operation in Belgium, she is sent to New York City, where she is involved in manipulating the press in order to shift American public sentiment toward getting involved in WWII.

Three decades on and Eva has buried her dangerous history. She is now Sally Gilmartin, a respectable English widow, living in a picturesque Cotswold village. No one, not even her daughter Ruth, knows her real identity. But once a spy, always a spy. Sally has far too many secrets, and she has no one to trust. Before it is too late, she must confront the demons of her past. This time though she can't do it alone, she needs Ruth's help.

Restless is a thrilling espionage novel set during the Second World War and a haunting portrait of a female spy.

Ratings and reviews

Well-done and interesting take on the spy novel. Enjoyed how the slow reveal of Eva's story kept pace with Ruth's dawning understanding of her mother's life. Altogether understated in that nice British way - no big explosion to relieve and resolve the tension. Well-read, too.

OK

About the author

William Boyd is the author of numerous novels, collections of short stories, and screenplays that have been filmed. His novels include Love is Blind; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; Sweet Caress; 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 Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; and Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in London and southwest France.