Restless

By: William Boyd

Narrated by: Rosamund Pike

Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone.

Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother's past—the mysterious death of Eva's beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth's help. William Boyd's Restless is a brilliant espionage audiobook and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is listening at its finest.

©2006 William Boyd (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a divison of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic reviews

• Audie Award Finalist, Fiction, Unabridged, 2007

"This fascinating story is well told." (Publishers Weekly)
"[An] espionage thriller and domestic drama by one of the very best prose stylists and storytellers in the English language." (Atlantic Monthly)

Good book - bad story

This book was very well written. The English was very good and the narration (with the exception of the male voices)was good too. I did however think that the story was weak. The intrigue wasn't exciting and I found the story amateurish. I was not able to identify or sympathize with the protaganist. The characters were written very stiffly, with a sort of "stiff upper lip" British pomposity. Even the young child was stiff and unbelievable. As one of the characters says, towards the end of the book, "it's good to know how insignificant and petty it was in the end...." That's kind of how I felt about the book

immersion

The narrator had elegant delivery which made the story luxurious and visual. The novel's ending was a bit of a let down but until the easy roll-up, it was compelling as hidden history.

Would have been a 5, but for the narrator

The story was fascinating and the narration actually very good - EXCEPT, that a well-educated, British woman should know how to pronounce "etcetera" and that it's "Johns Hopkins" not "John Hopkins" - sorry, but mistakes like this detract from the credibility and are disengaging.

The Twins Audio review

We loved the mixture of history and suspense! The narration was superb and captivating!!

Good performance

Nice performance. Structure of the novel worked well in the telling of the story; original and intriguing. Characters were well conveyed. Dialogue was short and stark(very British in the period?). The spy operation that was the crux of the story was confusing. It’s lack of clarity took a blow to the intensity and authenticity. This is a four star novel. Not superlative but not terrible. It is entertaining.

Review of Restless

Best spy thriller I've read in years. Convoluted yet rational. I'll order another of Boyd's novels.

Very Good Read

Long time subscriber, now finding it difficult to find a good listen. This is definately one to grab.

Pike is excellent. Twist is good, loose ends.

I was very happy with the main story, but felt the subplots were more red herrings than satisfying additions. Pike read well.

Excellent espionage in the John LeCarre mode

What did you love best about Restless?

The story kept my interest without having to resort to tricks or violence

What was one of the most memorable moments of Restless?

The moment when Eva discovered that she had been betrayed by someone on her team.

Have you listened to any of Rosamund Pike’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Equal to her other performances.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

My reaction to the book was the realization of what a spy's life really was.

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed this book. The main character was very believable. Although I really liked a character like Lizbeth Salander, it was always difficult for me to believe that someone like her could really exist in out society. She was a sociopath, albeit a likable sociopath, but her life was shaped by her circumstances and was almost to escape from. Eva chose her life as a spy and although this choice was for a seemingly noble reason, she never realized that she was trapped in it forever. That realization, that once a spy, always a spy, was an apocalyptic moment for me. The fact that Lucus probably laughed at his English society all the while that he was betraying it was a very powerful contrast to Eva who was miserable all the rest of her life. I liked the manner in which Boyd contrasted the two and the way in which he did not portray Lucus as an evil man until the very end. I will say that I thought the only mistake that Boyd made was the telegraphing of his two-facedness when he said, "The only rule is to trust no one". Boyd really captured the character of Eva as a real woman who was incredibly strong but vulnerable and gained her success in spydom by her brains, cleverness and singlemindess.

I was restless...

What did you like best about Restless? What did you like least?

The story.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The accentss were so distracting. The narrators voice was great until she did affected men's accents.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

yes

Any additional comments?

I wish narrators would read the book as written and not act out the story as a director sees it.