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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Restless
by William Boyd |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Secrets William Boyd
uses a simple device to present the narrative of his new novel, Restless.
In 1976, protagonist Sally Gilmartin presents her
daughter Ruth with a manuscript that reveals Sally’s secret life in World War
II, when she was known as Eva Delectorskaya. The
novel switches back and forth between the present and the manuscript. The
action accelerates in the present when Sally wants Ruth to help her find Lucas
Romer, the Brit who recruited her as a spy. The
pace is rapid, the story engaging, and the tension between mother and
daughter is taut. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 2, “Ludger Kleist,” set in the
present when Ruth is a teacher of English as a second language, pp. 28-31: “‘Yes, Mrs Amberson thought, it was my doing nothing that made the
difference.”’ Hugues looked more than usually puzzled,
almost panicked in fact. He was always puzzled by English grammar, anyway — frowning, muttering, talking to himself
in French — but today I had
painted him into a corner ‘My doing nothing — what?’ he said, helplessly. ‘My doing nothing — nothing. It’s a gerund.’ I tried to
look alert and interested but decided, there and then, to cut the lesson
short by ten minutes. I felt the pressure of desperate concentration in my
head — I had been almost
furious in my application, all to keep my mind occupied — but my attention was beginning to fray
badly. ‘We’ll tackle the gerund and gerundive tomorrow,’ I said, closing the
book (Life with the Ambersons,
vol. III), then added, apologetically, aware of the agitation I’d
aroused in him, ‘C’est
très compliqué.’ ‘Ah, bon.’ Like Hugues,
I too was sick of the Amberson family and their
laborious journey through the labyrinth of English grammar. And yet I was
still bound to them like an indentured servant — tied to the Ambersons
and their horrible lifestyle — and
the new pupil was due to arrive: only another two hours in their company to
go. Hugues pulled on his sports jacket — it was olive green with a charcoal
check and I thought the material was cashmere. It was meant to look, I
supposed, like the sort of jacket that an Englishman — in some mythological English world — would unreflectingly
don to go and see to his hounds, or meet his estate manager, or take tea with
his maiden aunt, but I had to confess I had yet to encounter a fellow
countryman sporting clothing quite so fine and so well cut. Hugues Corhillard
stood in my small, narrow study, pensively stroking his blond moustache, a
troubled expression still on his face — thinking
about the gerund and gerundive, I supposed. He was a rising young executive
in P’TIT PRIX, a low-cost French supermarket chain, and had been obliged by
senior management to improve his English so that P’TIT PRIX could access new
markets. I liked him — actually,
I liked most of my pupils — Hugues was a rare lazy one: often he spoke
French to me throughout the lesson and I English to him, but today had been
something of an assault course. Usually we talked about anything except
English grammar, anything to avoid the Amberson
family and their doings — their
trips, their modest crises (plumbing failures, chicken-pox, broken limbs),
visits from relatives, Christmas holidays, children’s exams, etcetera — and more and more our conversation
returned to the unusual heat of this English summer, how Hugues
was slowly stifling in his broiling bed and breakfast, about his
incomprehension at being obliged to sit down to eat a three-course, starchy
evening meal at 6.oo p.m., with the sun slamming down on the scorched,
dehydrated garden. When my conscience pricked me and I felt I should
remonstrate and urge him to speak in English, Hugues
would say that it was all conversation, n’est ce pas? with
a shy guilty smile, conscious he was breaking the strict terms of the
contract, it must be helping his comprehension, surely? I did not disagree:
I was earning £7 an hour chatting
to him in this way — if
he was happy, I was happy. I walked him through the flat to the back stairway. We
were on the first floor and in the garden I could see Mr
Scott, my landlord and my dentist, doing his strange exercises — waving his arms, stamping his big feet — before another patient arrived in his
surgery down below us. Hugues said goodbye and I sat down in the
kitchen, leaving the door open, waiting for my next pupil from Oxford English
Plus. This would be her first day and I knew little about her apart from her
name — Bérangère Wu — her status — beginner/intermediate — and her timetable — four weeks, two hours a day, five days
a week. Good, steady money. Then I heard voices in the garden and stepped out
of the kitchen on to the landing at the top of the wrought-iron staircase,
looking down to see Mr Scott talking urgently to a
small woman in a fur coat and pointing repeatedly at the front gate. ‘Mr Scott?’ I called. ‘I think
she’s for me.’ The woman — a
young woman — a young oriental
woman — climbed the
staircase to my kitchen. She was wearing, despite the summer heat, some kind
of long, expensive-looking, tawny fur coat slung across her shoulders and, as
far as I could tell from an initial glance, her other clothes — the satin blouse, the camel trousers,
the heavy jewels — were
expensive-looking also. ‘Hello, I’m Ruth,’ I said and we shook hands. ‘Bérangère,’ she said, looking
round my kitchen as a dowager duchess might, visiting
the home of one of her poorer tenants. She followed me through to the study,
where I relieved her of her coat and sat her down. I hung the coat on the
back of the door — it
seemed near weightless. ‘This coat is amazing,’ I said. ‘So light. What is it?’ ‘It’s a fox from ‘Shaved Asian fox.’ ‘Yes . . . I
am speaking English not so well,’ she said. I reached for Life with the Ambersons,
vol. Ruth’s stable
life pales in comparison to Sally’s past. Restless
presents their stories expertly, and most readers will enjoy hearing their
tales. Steve Hopkins,
December 18, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Restless.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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