With a close-to-zero posting record on this site, and the other inveterate readers all committing carbon chains to memory, I am here to fill the void.
Just call me Nicholas.
This book has been on my hitlist for a while now - any book with espionage and Award Winning on its jacket simultaneously sends me into paroxyms of delight. So here goes. I took it to the Yorkshire Dales on a camp, and by Day 2, was beginning to evade the manly wiles of football in a vainglorious effort to finish this book.
Sally Gilmartin, born Eva Delectorskaya, has a tale to tell - and that tale, of dodging Russian double agents, near-assassinations by moles in her own subspecialty of the British Secret Service, is ingeniously interwoven with the comparatively mundane account of her own daughter, slowly, but assiduously, putting the pieces together.
The opening chapters start almost innocuously - a death, a recruitment to the Secret Service; no surprises for what is after all an espionage novel. As the second chapter unfolds, we see Sally's daughter, Ruth, together with son Joachim, slowly at the receiving end of chapters of her mother's secret story. The sharp tones of espionage are lushly interwoven with the excruciating minutiae of Ruth's (in comparison) rather contrived woes with men (Hamid), her thesis, and her reworking of her relationship with her mother
But this novel is well played out. Twists ensue till the very end; no one is who they seem to be. A lot of internalisation occurs; we peer deep, deep into Eva's thought processes, realising how hard it can be to constantly morph identities.
Overall, a good thriller, and more than a good vacuous read on the beach.
I give it 8/10. Would have got more but for the sparing use of linguistic devices in the first few chapters, ensuring a draggy opening.
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