Restless
Discussion Tuesday, August 19, 6:00PM
Sally Gilmartin can’t escape her past.
Living in the idyllic English countryside in 1976, Sally is haunted by her experiences during the Second World War. She also suspects someone is trying to kill her. With mounting fear, Sally confides with her daughter Ruth; a woman struggling with her own past. Sally drops a bombshell. She is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré recruited as a spy by the British prior to the Second World War. For the past thirty years, Eva has led a second life hiding from the ghosts of her past.
Eva reveals her secret to her daughter through a series of written chapters for a planned book. As Ruth delves into her mother’s writing, she learns the shocking truth. Eva was recruited in Paris prior to the Second World War, following the death of her brother Kolia; also a British spy. Taught by an enigmatic spymaster named Lucas Romer, Eva learned the art of espionage and was made part of a unit specializing in media manipulation. Above all, she was taught ‘Rule Number One’ of spying: trust no one — a rule broken when she and Romer began a dangerous love affair. The affair had tragic consequences.
In 1941, Eva and Romer were assigned to the United States. They were given the task of manipulating the American media into motivating the public to support entry into the war on the Allied side. While in New York, Eva’s affair with Romer set in motion events that culminated in her betrayal and her flight from the British Secret Services. She found eventual refuge in a new life as Sally Gilmartin.
Thirty years later, Eva’s identity unravels with her confession to her daughter. Ruth struggles with the truth, and her own recent past fills her with self-doubt and insecurity. A failed relationship in Germany resulted in a son and an eventual return to England. Her mother’s confession leads Ruth to the realization that her mother is entangling her in one final mission — a showdown with Eva’s past betrayer.
Restless twists and turns through the double life of one remarkable woman. Through Eva’s life, William Boyd asks the intriguing question — How well do we truly know someone?
Life Of Pi
Discussion -Tuesday, April 15, 6:00PM
I enjoyed this magical tale, which offers an interesting thought: If the truth doesn’t make a good story, maybe you should invent a better one – one with fantastical impossibilities, metaphorical beauty, and deeper meaning than the original story. At least that’s what I walked away with.
Without spoiling the story for anyone, Life of Pi for me, is about a young boy’s struggle to make sense of a horrific set of events. Raised in a zoo in a remote Indian city called “Pondicerry”, Pi (a word based on a mathematical impossibility) is blessed with a colorful imagination and an ability to spin profound stories. This ability, and his love for God, proves to be his salvation. The ending of the story, and its meaning, it really left to the reader to decipher, and our book club was divided in opinion on that issue.
However, we all agreed that it was a beautiful, hopeful story. What resonates the most with me was the chapter in which Pi decides to secretly follow three different religions – Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam – simultaneously. When he is confronted by all three religious elders and told that he cannot worshop in all three religions, that he must choose, Pi’s response is:
“I just want to love God.”
How Reading Changed My Life
Monday, March 31, 6:00PM
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