This was my first William Boyd and I really didn't know what to expect. The story follows two narratives: one set in the 1940's and one set in the 1970's. One is about a woman's espionage in WW2 and the other charts the daughter's discoveries of her mother's espionage past.
I liked the espionage entries - they were underplayed but felt genuine. I thought that the spycraft and deception were well realised and the sense of immersion into the world of WW2 was excellent. But, if they were documented experiences they should have been written first person? Or maybe in a more rigid form? It read like a novel and that seemed odd to me.
1970's sections were, I thought, pretty awful and pretty pointless. I never felt a purpose to them and the continual references to the daughter's intelligence were annoying - considering that she seemed on the whole to be pretty dumb. The son was like no child I ever met - just wierd, I thought - and the other characters were just set dressing and felt like Boyd had written a novella about 1040's spooks and needed to pad it out. What was the purpose of the brother? The Iraqi oil man - some clumsy reference to the Gulf war? It all seemed a bit pointless.
So, an okay book and I did love the 1940's sections, but the rest of the book let those down.
