While not lacking in nerve, Ruth seems to be staggering through hangovers towards an implosion in her personal life. Is her mother's narrative a warning of the cost of deceit? Perhaps there is no point to be made, or perhaps the problem is the efficiency with which the book follows its structural devices. Restless brushes up against some intriguing subjects, teasing us with the fiction behind historical certainties – that “special relationship” with America – but it does not pause to explore things.
