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)

Best audiobook I've ever heard

I haven't read this book on paper, though I've listened to it about half a dozen times, so I really don't know how much of my love affair with the story is about William Boyd, and how much to Rosalind Pike's narration.

She is just insanely good -- her reading of the book is intelligent, which can't be underestimated in narration, since its absence is always so cringey. Pike understands the characters and portrays them with sensitivity and respect, and her accents etc are pitch-perfect.

Huge kudos to Boyd as well, of course. The story is a ripsnorter -- war, espionage, betrayal, intrigue... gave me real insight into two historical contexts that he made fascinating and rich.

I listen to audiobooks constantly and have for years. I've listened to hundreds, and this is hands down the best in terms of narration and story. Do yourself a favour.

Excellent writer;excellent reader

I enjoy many Audible selections and am a mystery as well as a novel fan. This book is one of the best listening experiences I have had thus far! The writing is especially fine. The characters are complex and deeply interesting. Haunting and modern. The reader did a wonderful job of portraying them.

Intricate and compelling

I continue to be amazed how William Boyd is able to write books that seem almost autobiographical from the point of view of their main protagonists when each one is so completely different from the others. I've not seen a repeated theme in any of his books and each one is an independent masterpiece of fictional history and thoroughly involving stories.

Restless continues this pattern but with the twist of running two concurrent, related but historically separated personal stories. A hugely enjoyable, clever and entertaining book read superbly with emotion and attention to the flow of the author's prose.

If you like good stories then choose this one.

Excellent

I highly recommend this. Great story, wonderfully woven together, with outstanding narration.

utterly gripped

Fantastic narration. Great story about women and the men that mess with them. I have never gone a 10 hour stretch listening to an audiobook before- I think my muscles have atrophied. Excellent for a long haul flight.

My Favorite Audio Book

There’a certain books I can open at any point and re-listen with pleasure such as the first two books of the Lord Otori series or Pride and Prejudice. To be honest I use them as sleep aids. This is one of them. After my third or so listen I realized this was my favorite audio book. It is is fabulous, slowly drawn out spy story. The complicated build up makes the sudden moments of action riveting. Rosamund Pike’s restrained narration is perfection for me.

Matchless

This is storytelling at its best. Beautiful language and a straight-forward plot creeping up on you until you are hooked. An unfolding intrigue marks this spin: no flatout fear, just reader/listner curiosity turning into an intense 'must know' right up to the end. Boyd has such a wonderful way with words, never extraneous, always amplifying the characters, the locale and the story. Ms. Pike has just the right sound and convincing multiple voices to make the read reminiscent of my early 'read-me-a-story' experiences. Can we please have more of William Boyd's books on audio? He's a delicious writer!

Well Written and interesting

Well written and narrated book. Not the best, most stunning, or dramatic book ever written but very interesting story which will keep you entertained. Not too fast and not too slow. Story is narrated from two first person points of view and it takes about 30 minutes to an hour to fully comprehend what is going on. However, this is part of the enchantment of the book.

Compelling

Would you consider the audio edition of Restless to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print, but the audio was enthralling. The performance was fantastic.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

I wanted to see how the two threads--daughter and mother--would connect in the present.

Which character – as performed by Rosamund Pike – was your favorite?

Eva, although they were all interesting.

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

I looked forward to listening and was fascinated to hear about the events in the past, although fictional.

Any additional comments?

It was a fantastic, suspenseful listen. Loved the performance. Thoroughly recommended.

Monotonous drone

I was hoping for a spy thriller with a female lead because they're so hard to find! I think this would have been much better as a short story because it seemed to go on and on about not much of anything, except for describing the hedgerows and cottages. The main character seems like a dreary sort who never cracks a smile and doesn't believe her own mother when she tells her she was a spy (thinks she crackers).

The reader is just, i'm sorry, awful. Monotone and dull and her male voices sound ridiculous and droll. No inflection at all and I found it hard to stay interested. Maybe in print it would "read" better. Definitely not a thriller, but more of a mother daughter journey.