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A review by andrewrobins
Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd
4.0
Excellent stuff from William Boyd.
He is particularly good when writing of an 'eve of war' or war setting, as per An Ice Cream War, and certain points in Any Human Heart, and also does "Englishman abroad" better than just about anyone.
Waiting for Sunrise is a combination of both of these genres, an engrossing spy thriller, which begins on the eve of the first world war in Vienna with a young English actor seeing a psychiatrist to cure his anorgasmia, and unfolds in a sequence of acts of derring-do across Europe - Vienna, Geneva, the front line in France, and London.
Reading this, I was thinking of another spy thriller I read recently, Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth, and whilst McEwan's book was both hard to believe, and uninvolving, Boyd kept the interest going, with a believable story, right to the end.
He is particularly good when writing of an 'eve of war' or war setting, as per An Ice Cream War, and certain points in Any Human Heart, and also does "Englishman abroad" better than just about anyone.
Waiting for Sunrise is a combination of both of these genres, an engrossing spy thriller, which begins on the eve of the first world war in Vienna with a young English actor seeing a psychiatrist to cure his anorgasmia, and unfolds in a sequence of acts of derring-do across Europe - Vienna, Geneva, the front line in France, and London.
Reading this, I was thinking of another spy thriller I read recently, Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth, and whilst McEwan's book was both hard to believe, and uninvolving, Boyd kept the interest going, with a believable story, right to the end.