Restless by William Boyd

CHOSEN FOR THE DUCHESS OF CORNWALL'S READING ROOM BOOK CLUB 'A wartime thriller featuring a resourceful woman in grave danger... a great read' – HRH The Duchess of Cornwall It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.

As a regular old novel it's pretty darn good. As a spy story it's a bit thin. The miniseries made a wise decision in cutting out most of the 1970's story line.

I thoroughly enjoyed this literary spy story about a woman in France who is recruited to work for the British and ultimately is assigned to the US during WW II to help persuade the US to join the war, but she runs into difficulties. What makes it more interesting is that there is a frame story set in 1976 in which the woman begins to reveal her past to her daughter through a series of chapters from her memoir. It's all a surprise to the daughter, who knew nothing about her mother's past. The story-telling of the alternating narratives is very effective. The reader wants to know what's going to happen next in both the “present” and the past of the story. [Although I also had the hardcover so I could read passages, I listened to the audio version of this book and the narrator–a woman with an English accent–was excellent.]