What a fun ride it was reading Restless by William Boyd. A bit of
a mystery, a bit of an English spy story and a bit of a family drama
all rolled into one. The book is broken into two narrative
streams. The first is Ruth who teaches English to foreigners
rather than finishing her doctorate. The second is the story of her
mother Sally (real name Eva) who in fact, was a Russian who gets
hooked into spying for the English immediately prior to and during
World War II. The sections surrounding Ruth are fine and have the
aura of a small town mystery story as she is surprised to learn about
her mother's past, but it is really Eva's story we want to know
about. Those sections crackle with a real sense of danger as Eva
makes her way through the world of espionage while trusting no
one. I liked the juxtaposition of Ruth's mundane, simple post-war
life with the covert life of Eva, truly surviving only by her
wits. I'll never look at a very sharp pencil the same way again.
The story is clever, as are the historical twists and Boyd tells it in
an engaging style. This is a something akin to a literary page turner
and it's about the length that you could curl up one evening and devour
whole. Buy at Amazon
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