William Boyd

Restless Reading Group Guide

Restless has been chosen as one of Richard and Judy's bookclub choices.

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About the book - in brief

One hot summer afternoon in 1976 Ruth Gilmartin pays her mother a visit. When Sally hands Ruth a buff folder labelled ‘The Story of Eva Delectorskaya’ the certainties of Ruth’s world are overturned. Sally, or Eva, as Ruth must now think of her, was once a spy, recruited into the British Secret Service in 1939 by Lucas Romer as part of AAS, Romer’s somewhat maverick branch of the Service, and this is her story. Eva proves herself adept at her craft, endlessly resourceful, hiding every emotion and trusting no one. Posted to New York, AAS’s mission is to pull the reluctant US into the war. Caught up in an affair with Romer, Eva needs to be doubly sure to keep her wits about her. When she is sent to New Mexico, what should have been a simple courier mission becomes puzzlingly complex and Eva finds herself in grave danger. As this taut thriller moves towards its dénouement, alternating between Ruth’s narrative and Eva’s story, William Boyd cranks up the tension with bluffs and double bluffs until every loose end is neatly tied into a satisfying resolution.

William Boyd excels in the art of storytelling and it is this skill together with his abilities as ‘a wry historian of twentieth-century life’, as one critic has dubbed him, that are the lynchpins of the tightly plotted Restless. Through Eva Delectorskaya Boyd explores how far individuals are prepared to stretch their personal morality in the cause of the greater good and the far-reaching effects those judgements can have, both on their own lives and the lives of their families.

About the book - in detail

Boyd’s previous novel Any Human Heart encompassed the whole of the twentieth century seen through the eyes of Logan Mountstuart, who contrived always to be on the fringes of the century’s defining influences. He wanted his next book to be a novel ‘where all the joins and dovetails are beautifully meshed and sandpapered’. Readers of Any Human Heart may remember that Mountstuart was briefly involved in espionage, and it was during research for this part of the book that Boyd became interested ‘in the psychology of the spy — what the effect could be on the rest of your life, what shadows it would cast’. He ‘envisaged the experience as this unending watchfulness and suspicion’, hence the title of the novel. The word “restless” sums up a kind of anxiety, as well as an urge to move on.’

In the novel Eva disseminates misinformation in the form of news stories in an effort to manipulate the US into World War II. As Boyd points out this action was aimed at a ‘potential ally’, ‘not an enemy’. He was fascinated by the British Secret Service operation in America between 1939 and 1941, and in particular British Security Coordination set up at the behest of Winston Churchill and headed by the Canadian industrialist William Stephenson, considered by some to be a model for James Bond. ‘There was this huge covert operation on behalf of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, and it's quite extraordinary what we were doing … We were massively influencing American news media, with the collusion of certain Americans, in the full knowledge that 80% of Americans didn't want to get involved in the war in Europe.’ This may seem strange to us, given the emphasis on Britain’s special relationship with America, but Boyd explains ‘there was a lot of anglophobia and anti-imperialism, and it’s a moot point, to put it mildly, whether had Pearl Harbor not happened the US would have joined the war in 1941.’

As Boyd notes, wryly, ‘It will be interesting to see when the book is published in America just how much they're aware of what was going on.’

About the Author

William Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana, on 7 March 1952 and was educated at Gordonstoun School, Glasgow University and Jesus College, Oxford. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa; was published while he was a lecturer in English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and won both the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. In 1983 Boyd was selected as one of Granta magazine’s twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. The publication in 1998 of his book Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960, billed as the ‘biography’ of a neglected genius, caused a few red faces amongst prominent art critics who claimed to have heard of the fictional painter. As well as being a novelist and short-story writer, Boyd has also written television screenplays for Good and Bad at Games, Dutch Girls and Scoop. He wrote and directed the First World War drama The Trench, which was first screened in 1999. His sixth novel, Armadillo, was adapted for television as a four-part series screened by the BBC in 2001 for which he wrote the screenplay. He has also written the screenplays for film versions of two of his other novels: A Good Man in Africa and Stars and Bars. William Boyd lives in London.

Discussion

• ‘No: face it, everything you thought you knew about your mother was a cleverly constructed fantasy.’ (page 32). How does Sally’s revelation about her identity change the way that Ruth looks at her own life, and at her mother’s life?
• ‘”The one and only rule”. Don’t trust anyone — not even the one person you think you can trust most in the world. Always suspect. Always mistrust’ (page 56). In what way does this prove to be good advice to Eva? How does this rule influence her life?
• ‘She walked slowly down the road towards the village, her mind full of noisy and competing interpretations of everything she had witnessed’ (page 86). What was it that Eva witnessed at Prenslo? How could she have interpreted it? What is the significance of the ‘Prenslo incident’?
• ‘The truth had to be faced: someone, somehow, had betrayed her’ (page 216). Did you guess the identity of Eva’s betrayer before it was revealed? If so, at what point and what prompted your suspicions? What are the implications of her betrayal?
• ‘He looked at her, baffled. This was the first genuine emotion I had seen his face register. “What on earth are you talking about?” he said’ (page 312). What do you make of Romer’s question and its implications for Eva?
• What do you think of the way the novel ended?
• ‘It was always going to be a dirty war, Romer repeatedly said, nothing could be discounted in the waging of it’ (page 173). What do you think of the work of the AAS and the part that Eva played in it? Is it immoral or a necessary evil? What are the reasons for your answer?
• Both the narrative strands in Restless are written from a woman’s point of view. How successful is Boyd in capturing Ruth’s voice in her first person narrative and Eva’s viewpoint in her story? Which did you feel was most successful?
• William Boyd alternates scenes from Ruth’s life with Eva’s story. How well did you think this structure worked? Were there echoes of Eva’s narrative in Ruth’s, and if so what were they?
• How does Boyd build suspense throughout the novel?
• Boyd has written scripts for both film and television. How well do you think Restless would translate to the screen? Are there particular passages that struck you as cinematic? If so what were they, and why?

Resources

Interview by Benedicte Page in The Bookseller
Profile of William Boyd at the British Council website including a critical essay by Dr Eve Patten
Wikipedia entry for William Stephenson, head of British Security Coordination

Further Reading

Island Madness by Tim Binding
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon
Atonement by Ian McEwan

Novels

A Good Man in Africa
An Ice-Cream War
Stars and Bars
The New Confessions
Brazzaville Beach
The Blue Afternoon
Armadillo
Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960
Any Human Heart

Short Stories
On the Yankee Station and Other Stories
School Ties
The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' and Other Stories
Fascination

Non fiction
Bamboo

Click here to download this reading guide.