“False information can be just as useful, influential, as telling, transforming or as damaging as true information…how could you tell what was genuine and what was the product of a clever, devious and determined mind?”
Barely a day goes by, it seems, without talk of fake news and disinformation, and services such BBC Verify exist to examine ‘facts’ and claims to try to determine whether or not they are true. But even where a story is subsequently debunked it’s hard to wipe the slate clean. Mud sticks.
This is nothing new. In Restless, twenty-eight-year-old Eva Delectorskaya begins work at “The Rumour Factory”, a small team set up by the British Secret Service to feed false stories to the world’s press under the shelter of a genuine news agency. It is 1939. Eva was recruited by Lucas Romer following the death of her brother, Kolia, who (Romer tells her) was killed doing dangerous work for the British government. Eva grows disillusioned with the “parlour game” of constructing “clever little fibs”, but it isn’t long before Romer sends her out of the office to take part in active missions…
Alongside the story of Eva Delectorskaya is a parallel story set in 1976. Ruth Gilmartin leads a relatively quiet life, teaching English as a foreign language and raising her young son, when her mother, Sally Gilmartin nee Fitzgerald, makes the “bombshell” revelation that her real name is Eva Delectorskaya. The two stories collide when Sally tells Ruth she thinks someone is trying to kill her and asks her to try to find Romer.
Boyd’s prose is pitch-perfect, as ever, but the plot is rather uneven. The ins and outs of Ruth’s life are nowhere near as gripping as the intricacies of wartime espionage recounted by Eva – and even Eva’s story isn’t all that memorable. A week after finishing Restless I could barely recall anything about either story-line, and this was the second time I’d read this novel. Worse, I didn’t even remember I’d read it before until Hubby reminded me, which says it all, really.
Admittedly, in the moment it was an entertaining enough read – just don’t expect the story to stick! Restless was winner of the Costa Novel Award in 2006.
Rating: ** Worth reading
In 1981 Boyd won the Whitbread First Novel Award (the precursor of the Costa Award) for A Good Man in Africa, which I’ve reviewed in an earlier post.
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