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Overview

Sally Gilmartin can’t escape her past.

Living in the idyllic English countryside in 1976, Sally is haunted by her experiences during the Second World War. She also suspects someone is trying to kill her. With mounting fear, Sally confides with her daughter Ruth; a woman struggling with her own past. Sally drops a bombshell. She is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré recruited as a spy by the British prior to the Second World War. For the past thirty years, Eva has led a second life hiding from the ghosts of her past.

Eva reveals her secret to her daughter through a series of written chapters for a planned book....

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More About This Book

Overview

Sally Gilmartin can’t escape her past.

Living in the idyllic English countryside in 1976, Sally is haunted by her experiences during the Second World War. She also suspects someone is trying to kill her. With mounting fear, Sally confides with her daughter Ruth; a woman struggling with her own past. Sally drops a bombshell. She is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré recruited as a spy by the British prior to the Second World War. For the past thirty years, Eva has led a second life hiding from the ghosts of her past.

Eva reveals her secret to her daughter through a series of written chapters for a planned book. As Ruth delves into her mother’s writing, she learns the shocking truth. Eva was recruited in Paris prior to the Second World War, following the death of her brother Kolia; also a British spy. Taught by an enigmatic spymaster named Lucas Romer, Eva learned the art of espionage and was made part of a unit specializing in media manipulation. Above all, she was taught ‘Rule Number One’ of spying: trust no one — a rule broken when she and Romer began a dangerous love affair. The affair had tragic consequences.

In 1941, Eva and Romer were assigned to the United States. They were given the task of manipulating the American media into motivating the public to support entry into the war on the Allied side. While in New York, Eva’s affair with Romer set in motion events that culminated in her betrayal and her flight from the British Secret Services. She found eventual refuge in a new life as Sally Gilmartin.

Thirty years later, Eva’s identity unravels with her confession to her daughter. Ruth struggles with the truth, and her own recent past fills her with self-doubt and insecurity. A failed relationship in Germany resulted in a son and an eventual return to England. Her mother’s confession leads Ruth to the realization that her mother is entangling her in one final mission — a showdown with Eva’s past betrayer.

Restless twists and turns through the double life of one remarkable woman. Through Eva’s life, William Boyd asks the intriguing question — How well do we truly know someone?

Editorial Reviews

Ben Macintyre
Boyd has written a crackling spy thriller, but more than that, he has evoked the atmosphere of wartime espionage: the clubby, grubby moral accommodations, the paranoia, the tense sexuality…Boyd's first novel, A Good Man in Africa, was a glinting satire, while An Ice-Cream War combined history, comedy and tragedy to wonderful effect. Here he has used a more muted palette, with no humor, no literary embroidery and little emotion. The pared-down style, clipped and understated, perfectly fits the sepia setting.
—The New York Times
John Dalton
This is Boyd's eighth novel and 11th book of fiction, and he has earned a deservedly enthusiastic critical and popular following in Britain and beyond. His characters are vivid and human. He weds the engaging personal lives of his characters to diverse and far-reaching episodes of 20th-century history in a way that feels simultaneously accurate and intimate.
— The Washington Post
More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews
The New Yorker
Boyd’s ninth novel, an absorbing historical thriller, is loosely based on the history of a covert branch of British intelligence created to coax America into the Second World War. The story unfolds on parallel tracks as Sally Gilmartin, born Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigrée recruited into the British Secret Service in 1939, reveals her clandestine past in an autobiography that she gives to her daughter, Ruth, a graduate student and single mother living a dull civilian life in Oxford in 1976. These installments give the narrative momentum (the accounts of Ruth’s daily life drag, by contrast) as Eva describes the taciturn spy who recruited and trained her before becoming her lover; her secret propaganda work in New York; and the act of duplicity, almost deadly, that forced her to flee to England and live under an assumed identity. Ruth barely has time to process the shock of her mother’s secret before she is swept into a dangerous game: finding her mother’s betrayer before it’s too late.
Publishers Weekly
When Ruth Gilmartin learns the true identity and the WWII profession of her aging mother, Sally Gilmartin, at the start of Boyd's elegant ninth novel (after Any Human Heart), Ruth is understandably surprised. Sally, n e Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian migr living in Paris in 1939, was recruited as a spy by Lucas Romer, the head of a secretive propaganda group called British Security Coordination, to help get America into the war. This fascinating story is well told, but slightly undercut by Ruth's less-than-dramatic life as a single mother teaching English at Oxford while pursuing a graduate degree in history. Ruth's more pedestrian existence can't really compete with her mother's dramatic revelations. The contemporary narrative achieves a good deal more urgency when Ruth's mother recruits her to hunt down the reclusive, elusive Romer. But the real story is Eva/Sally's, a vividly drawn portrait of a minor figure in spydom caught up in the epic events leading up to WWII. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In his latest novel, Boyd (A Good Man in Africa) entwines two stories. One, set in England in 1976, focuses on the everyday preoccupations of Ruth Gilmartin, a single mother who teaches English to foreigners in Oxford. Ruth's life changes when her mother, Sally, begins to reveal her past to her daughter. In the early years of World War II, Sally, whose real name is Eva Delectorskaya, was recruited as a spy by British intelligence. Sent to New York in 1941, she spread black propaganda in an attempt to coax the United States into the war. On a mission in New Mexico, Eva was betrayed and had to kill a man to survive. Unable to trust her team, she escaped to Canada and eventually returned to England, where she lives in seclusion under a new identity, waiting for her betrayer to track her down. While some readers may be annoyed by the author's stylistic tics, particularly the profusion of paired adverbs (e.g., people speak "seriously, weightily" and shrug "hopelessly, helplessly"), others will enjoy this glimpse of wartime dirty tricks. For larger public libraries.-Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Atmospheric novel about an older woman whose past career as a WWII spy has come back to haunt her. Ruth Gilmartin is a single mother of one in 1976 England. On a visit to Grandma's, Ruth's mother, Sally, informs her that her real name is Eva Delectorskaya, and that she was an agent of British Intelligence during World War II. Eva hands Sally a manuscript of her story, abruptly launching the duo and the reader into the past. Boyd (Any Human Heart, 2003, etc.) seems more eager to tell Eva's story than Ruth's. Not surprisingly, as the elder Gilmartin finds herself swept into a world on the brink of war in 1939. Recruited by the swarthy and mysterious Lucas Romer, Eva is trained in spycraft and joins Romer's team, specializing in disinformation. Propaganda is Eva's stock in trade, and she has a knack for it. Still, for all her talent, she finds herself attracted to her secretive boss. Boyd has obviously read a few espionage novels. Can any young woman resist James Bond? Ruth leads a far less glamorous life. Saddled with Jochen, her inquisitive son, she teaches English as a Second Language. Her adventures occur vicariously, through the lives of the foreign students who study with her. With a nod to irony, Ruth teaches people to blend into their surroundings. At first, her mother's revelation seems to be a sign of senility. As Ruth begins to investigate, the shadows of her mother's former life reveal themselves. There is some truth to this work of fiction, and the real-life events make for a fascinating backdrop. Boyd skillfully manipulates language as easily as Eva does. He handles the plot more roughly. Ruth is clumsy albeit untrained, and the other characters in her world are ratherthinly sketched. Yet Boyd fits the puzzle together neatly in the end. A bit light on action and intrigue, but a cool, collected effort.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781596912366
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
  • Publication date: 10/3/2006
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 737,747
  • Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.40 (d)

Meet the Author

William Boyd is the author of eight novels, including A Good Man in Africa, An Ice Cream War and Any Human Heart. Born in Ghana, Africa in 1952, Boyd often sets his novels in far-off exotic locations in the tradition of Graham Greene. From Manila to the deep American South, Boyd’s novels traverse time and place exploring the human condition. A former Oxford lecturer in English literature, Boyd’s writing bares the hallmark of meticulous historical research. His works have received several awards, including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. Boyd has also penned thirteen screenplays that have been turned into film. William Boyd currently lives with his wife Susan in London and southwest France.

Foreward

1. What drives Eva to join the British secret services? Is she motivated solely by a desire to avenge her brother Kolia’s death?

2. How does Eva’s background make her an excellent recruit for the world of espionage?

3. In becoming a secret agent, what part of her humanity does Eva sacrifice?

4. Lucas Romer instructs Eva that ‘Rule Number One’ of espionage is to not trust anyone. If an agent can’t trust anyone, can they ultimately remain loyal to their nation?

5. Eva notes Romer’s tendency to order oysters when dining with her; considering the aphrodisiac a symbol of their relationship. Romer also discourages Eva from receiving extensive arms training. How is sex used as the ultimate weapon in the novel?

6. Romer’s AAS Ltd. specializes in media distortion: creating misleading stories that are planted with legitimate news agencies. The goal is to influence the course of world events. Consider the current war in Iraq and the role the media played in the build up to the American invasion in 2003?

7. How does Eva’s past prevent her from showing more affection towards her daughter Ruth?

8. Timothy Thoms concludes that Lucas Romer was a Soviet agent working at keeping the United States from joining Britain against Nazi Germany, thus allowing the Soviet Union to defeat Germany on her own terms and preventing an American post-war presence in Western Europe. Yet, prior to the Soviet counterattack of Dec. 5, 1941, the Soviet Union would have been desperate for American aid as the fall of Moscow was a real danger. Since Romer and his team were present in the United States prior to Dec. 1941 (during theSoviet Union’s darkest hours), is it not more likely that Romer was a German agent since Germany had more to gain at this stage than Russia in keeping the United States out of the war?

9. At the end of the novel, Eva is seemingly caught off guard when her daughter Ruth asks about Uncle Kolia. The author writes that Eva repeats Uncle Kolia’s name as if testing the phrase, savouring its unfamiliarity. In carrying a number of identities throughout her lifetime, has Eva lost her sense of identity and personal history?

10. The novel highlights extensive efforts by the BSC to influence American foreign policy. Was the BSC justified in attempting to draw an isolationist nation into the Second World War? Consider the following scenario: Prior to the Iraq War, the CIA uses similar tactics to the BSC in an attempt to draw Canada into the war. Would the United States have been justified in carrying out such actions?

Reading Group Guide

1. What drives Eva to join the British secret services? Is she motivated solely by a desire to avenge her brother Kolia’s death?

2. How does Eva’s background make her an excellent recruit for the world of espionage?

3. In becoming a secret agent, what part of her humanity does Eva sacrifice?

4. Lucas Romer instructs Eva that ‘Rule Number One’ of espionage is to not trust anyone. If an agent can’t trust anyone, can they ultimately remain loyal to their nation?

5. Eva notes Romer’s tendency to order oysters when dining with her; considering the aphrodisiac a symbol of their relationship. Romer also discourages Eva from receiving extensive arms training. How is sex used as the ultimate weapon in the novel?

6. Romer’s AAS Ltd. specializes in media distortion: creating misleading stories that are planted with legitimate news agencies. The goal is to influence the course of world events. Consider the current war in Iraq and the role the media played in the build up to the American invasion in 2003?

7. How does Eva’s past prevent her from showing more affection towards her daughter Ruth?

8. Timothy Thoms concludes that Lucas Romer was a Soviet agent working at keeping the United States from joining Britain against Nazi Germany, thus allowing the Soviet Union to defeat Germany on her own terms and preventing an American post-war presence in Western Europe. Yet, prior to the Soviet counterattack of Dec. 5, 1941, the Soviet Union would have been desperate for American aid as the fall of Moscow was a real danger. Since Romer and his team were present in the United States prior to Dec. 1941 (during the Soviet Union’s darkest hours), is it not more likely that Romer was a German agent since Germany had more to gain at this stage than Russia in keeping the United States out of the war?

9. At the end of the novel, Eva is seemingly caught off guard when her daughter Ruth asks about Uncle Kolia. The author writes that Eva repeats Uncle Kolia’s name as if testing the phrase, savouring its unfamiliarity. In carrying a number of identities throughout her lifetime, has Eva lost her sense of identity and personal history?

10. The novel highlights extensive efforts by the BSC to influence American foreign policy. Was the BSC justified in attempting to draw an isolationist nation into the Second World War? Consider the following scenario: Prior to the Iraq War, the CIA uses similar tactics to the BSC in an attempt to draw Canada into the war. Would the United States have been justified in carrying out such actions?

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Posted March 29, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    9781933397627 9780553804416

    Interesting Plot

    The plot of Restless is very interesting, especially because of its historical backdrop. The idea of the main character (Sally) having a secret identity seemed very promising at first and I was expecting non-stop straightforward action, a hefty dose of mystery and a heart-stopping conclusion. However, the book felt more like a love story than a thriller. The events that took place leading to the first big revelation felt hurried and contrived. Even the style with which some parts of the story were written sometimes sounded juvenile. Sally's story provided much of the action and excitement but whatever momentum the reader gets from reading Sally's story is lost when the story shifts to Ruth. There was just too much detail about Ruth's life that seemed irrelevant to Sally's story, which is the main theme of the book. The conclusion was also a bit of a letdown. The book was not bad but it was not great either.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted February 2, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    'THE FINEST STORYTELLER OF HIS GENERATION'

    British actress Rosamund Pike is probably best known for playing the gal who caught James Bond's eye in Die Another Day. While that performance certainly grabbed audience attention, she has numerous other noteworthy credits both on stage and in films. She does another star turn as she inhabits two narrative voices in the 9th novel by William Boyd. He's been called 'The finest storyteller of his generation,' and Restless again demonstrates how splendidly he can spin a tale. Set in Oxfordshire, England during 1976 our story opens with a bit of a shock - Sally Gilmartin gives her daughter, Ruth, a memoir she has penned. Ruth is amazed to learn that her mother is not at all who she believed her to be. In actuality, Sally Gilmartin is Eva Delectorskaya, A Russian who worked for the British Secret Service during World War II. Sally or Eva has guarded this secret well for almost 30 years. Now, she is revealing the truth about herself to her daughter not because she wishes to be open but because she fears for her life and Ruth is the one person in the world she believes she can trust. Ruth is not only astounded but disbelieving, wondering if her mother may be delusional at the onset of old age. Nonetheless, for her mother's sake she tries to find Romer the man who recruited Sally/Eva and with whom she had an affair. Restless is related in parallel stories, probably the most compelling are the accounts of Sally/Eva's enlistment, training, and experiences. Following the war she returns to England, adopts an identity and marries. She has every reason to believe her past is well behind her. Not so! Highly recommended. - Gail Cooke

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

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    Posted November 7, 2008

    No text was provided for this review.

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    Posted February 12, 2010

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