Review: RESTLESS, William Boyd

• 
  This edition provided as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• Originally published 2006
• 325 pages
• Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2006.

Synopsis (publisher)

What happens to your life when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? Ruth Gilmartin discovers the strange and haunting truth about her mother, Sally, during the long hot summer of 1976.

For Sally Gilmartin is not what she seems at all. Russian by birth, she was recruited into the British Secret Service in Paris in 1939 and spent the war years as a spy. But once a spy, always a spy. Sally Gilmartin has far too many dangerous 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 yet another tour de force from William Boyd. Exploring the devastating consequences of duplicity and betrayal it is a thrilling novel that captures the drama of the Second World War and a remarkable portrait of a female spy. Full of suspense, emotion and history, this is storytelling at its very finest.

My Take

One of those novels that I didn't want to put down so I read it in nearly one sitting. 

Set mainly in the period 1939 to 1941, before America is drawn into World War II, and then nearly 30 years later.  Two narrative voices - Sally Gilmartin formerly Eva Delectorskaya has written her story for her daughter Ruth to read, and then we also have Ruth's input as she tries to decide whether what she is reading is true or whether her mother is developing dementia. Sally has been carrying the burden of betrayal for nearly 30 years, and has lived what seems to Ruth to be a fairly normal life during that time in Oxford. Now Sally seems to be developing paranoia, looking over her shoulder, and she tells Ruth the time has come to confront her betrayer.

A fascinating read - did that sort of thing really happen? I'd worked out the final thread well before the end but that didn't matter.  

My rating:4.6

I've also read

4.7, GABRIEL'S MOON