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Waiting for Sunrise [Kindle Edition]

William Boyd (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews) |
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Review

William Boyd is one of our most cherished writers ... Waiting for Sunrise is as much A Dance to the Music of Time as Any Human Heart, a giddy burlesque where characters, particularly figures of erotic obsession, vanish only to reappear unexpectedly ... It's the sort of novel you finish then begin again to revisit your favourite bits ... More than anything, Waiting for Sunrise is a gleeful celebration of storytelling - sly, clever, frequently hilarious, always involving. For me at least this is the literary event of the year The Times There are few more reliable literary pleasures than a Boyd novel. Over three decades he has established himself as one of Britain's most popular and highly regarded novelists ... He is a novelist who writes intelligent books about plausible and fully rounded characters, brimming with challenging ideas and themes. Above all, he is a storyteller nonpareil -- Mick Brown Telegraph Boyd guides the reader with a master's hand. It's ages since I read a novel that offers such breathlessly readable narrative enjoyment, such page-by-page storytelling confidence and solidity. Waiting for Sunrise is a homage to thriller writers, spy novels and crime detection stories and films from a hundred years ago, stretching from Sherlock Holmes, via Buchan and Greene, to Hitchcock Independent An intricately plotted world of spies, lies and the double cross ... a coming of age story about an individual's self enlightenment, as much as a sui generis thriller. Waiting for Sunrise proves that rarest of beasts: a tantalisingly experimental work that is also an immensely satisfying page turner Sunday Telegraph

Review

William Boyd is one of our most cherished writers ... Waiting for Sunrise is as much A Dance to the Music of Time as Any Human Heart, a giddy burlesque where characters, particularly figures of erotic obsession, vanish only to reappear unexpectedly ... It's the sort of novel you finish then begin again to revisit your favourite bits ... More than anything, Waiting for Sunrise is a gleeful celebration of storytelling - sly, clever, frequently hilarious, always involving. For me at least this is the literary event of the year The Times There are few more reliable literary pleasures than a Boyd novel. Over three decades he has established himself as one of Britain's most popular and highly regarded novelists ... He is a novelist who writes intelligent books about plausible and fully rounded characters, brimming with challenging ideas and themes. Above all, he is a storyteller nonpareil -- Mick Brown Telegraph Boyd guides the reader with a master's hand. It's ages since I read a novel that offers such breathlessly readable narrative enjoyment, such page-by-page storytelling confidence and solidity. Waiting for Sunrise is a homage to thriller writers, spy novels and crime detection stories and films from a hundred years ago, stretching from Sherlock Holmes, via Buchan and Greene, to Hitchcock Independent An intricately plotted world of spies, lies and the double cross ... a coming of age story about an individual's self enlightenment, as much as a sui generis thriller. Waiting for Sunrise proves that rarest of beasts: a tantalisingly experimental work that is also an immensely satisfying page turner Sunday Telegraph
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Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 721 KB
  • Print Length: 369 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1408817748
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (16 Feb 2012)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B006X9QJNE
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #188 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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William Boyd
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
44 of 48 people found the following review helpful
superb story telling 16 Feb 2012
By markr TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a highly readable novel which will keep you turning pages into the night...The story focuses around the character of Lysander Rief, a young English actor who is drawn by events into the world of wartime spies. Opening in 1913, in Vienna, shortly before the outbreak of war, the story is driven along by the chance meeting, and subsequent tempestuous relationship, of Lysander, and a young English sculptress. Arrested for a crime he did not commit, Lysander finds the consequences taking over his life, taking him deeper and deeper into a chain of events in which nothing is quite what it seems.

As always with William Boyd, this is superbly crafted fiction, beautifully written, and compulsive reading

Superb - highly recommended
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53 of 58 people found the following review helpful
Anticlimactic 24 Feb 2012
By M. D. Smart VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
In his novel Restless, William Boyd pulled off the difficult trick of marrying a tense wartime thriller with an affecting study of a daughter coming to terms with the knowledge that her mother is not the person she thought she knew. The result was a book that had the compulsive appeal of a commercial page-turner with the satisfying emotional depth of the literary fiction Boyd is known for. In his latest title, Waiting For Sunrise, he attempts the same feat - sadly, the results this time are less successful, and it adds up to a disappointing and disjointed whole.

The main problem with Waiting For Sunrise is it appears to be two disparate novels cobbled together. It begins in pre-WWI Vienna as we follow a young English actor, Lysander Rief, who has come to seek a cure for a debilitating sexual problem through psychoanalysis. During his stay he meets a free-spirited sculptor, Hettie Bull, and they begin an intense affair which apparently cures his 'problem'. All seems to be going well when Lysander suddenly finds himself in serious trouble and has to return to England. From that point the novel morphs into an espionage thriller, with Lysander pressured into assisting the War Office with breaking a secret code and unmasking a traitor.

In fact, both these plot strands are gripping, up to a point; we get a fascinating glimpse of pre-war Europe, an insight into psychoanalysis and a passionate love story in the first section, while the spy story is genuinely thrilling for the most part, with plot twists galore and almost every supporting character coming under suspicion. It even begins to seem that these two halves of the story may be connected after all, and I was enjoying the book a great deal...until the last few chapters. I don't want to spoil the book for others so I won't go into too much detail, but I can't remember the last time I felt such a crushing sense of anticlimax upon finishing a novel as I did here. His last book, Ordinary Thunderstorms, suffered from a similarly disappointing finale.

Let me make it clear: firstly, I understand that Boyd is making a point about how we can never really know the truth about other people or even the world itself - all we have are our own perceptions to rely upon - I get that. Secondly, I have no problem with ambiguous endings; in fact, too neat a finish can be highly unconvincing, and I often enjoy books that leave questions unanswered. The problem here is that for the 200 or so pages preceding the damp squib of an ending, we have been encouraged into a state of high tension, with mystery piled upon mystery clearly building to an exciting denouement that never arrives. It also becomes clear at the close of the story that the two halves of the book had almost no connection to each other - so what was the point of including both?

This is the sixth novel by William Boyd I've read; I greatly admire his gift for combining intelligent, well-written prose with superb storytelling - but this is the second time in a row that I've felt let down by his plot simply fizzling out at its climax. It's such a shame - right until the final pages I was hooked by Waiting For Sunrise - four stars at least, I thought. Instead I closed the book feeling it had been a disjointed, unsatisfying read, two stars at best. A great pity.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
The only negative about this new William Boyd book is that it takes no time at all to read and then you have another two years or so to wait for another one.

Waiting for Sunrise, which took me about a week to consume, is vintage Boyd and doesn't disappoint. It's a thrilling spy thriller with a human story, which starts in Vienna before the outbreak of the First World War in late 1913, and ends in London about two years later.

The main protagonist is a handsome actor, Lysander Rief, who decides to go to Vienna to seek a cure for a complaint which is preventing him from marrying his actress fiance, Blanche. But as the weeks turn into months, the young Englishman gets entangled in much more than The River of Sex, which one of his newly found friends at the guest house tells him runs below the surface of the respectable Viennese society; or parallelism, the cure his doctor has prescribed to Lysander.

Having escaped back to London, in 1914 as war breaks out Lysander, in a moment of madness, enlists and briefly becomes a private in the army. He serves at an interment camp near Swansea, where the army makes use of his German language skills. But he's soon transferred to another department for some more interesting duties, a dangerous commission he is unable to refuse.

With his new duties, Lysander Rief's life becomes increasingly unpredictable and dangerous. He feels like a puppet controlled by strings, held by unknown people. He's sent to Geneva on a mission, and barely surviving it, begins to mistrust everyone around him.

As the story weaves between Vienna, Geneva and London, the reader, just as Lysander, is unsure who's speaking the truth and who's lying. Who is sincere and who is acting. 'We all act all the time', Blanche says at one point.

In spite of its impeccable credentials as a fast moving, well plotted spy thriller, Boyd's latest novel is also a study into the human condition. (He just can't help himself) At the very beginning of the book Lysander consults a psychiatrist; as a result throughout the book he reflects on his own emotions through a diary he has titled, 'Autobiographical Investigations'. This is a very fine tool for a writer - as well as telling the story from a third person point of view, Boyd is also able to let his reader into the innermost thoughts of the protagonist, without it seeming forced. The diary also makes the frequent sex scenes more realistic than a third person narrative would have done. Brilliant.

Another of William Boyd's many talents as a writer lies in his ability to immerse the reader into the world he has created so completely, that the world outside - the real world the readers resides in - doesn't seem to matter. He takes you into a turn-of-the-century cesspit of espionage. He places his protagonist in unreal, wonderful situations with - say - a femme fatale, or a passionate madwoman. He eggs the reader on, not letting you rest until the story is finished.

Boyd's characters in Waiting for Sunrise are so skilfully drawn, that you feel as if you've lost a couple of friends, few enemies and several unpleasant acquaintances when the book comes to an end.

Yes, I'm in mourning for the world in Waiting for Sunrise. Let's hope Boyd is working hard on a new story...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Return To Form
A return to form for William Boyd after Ordinary Thunderstorms - where the word ordinary was more than a little bit of a give-away. Read more
Published 11 hours ago by Dan Mollett
What a disappointment!
William Boyd is a literary god to me who never lets me down. This book began with great promise in terms of place and characters and as always perfect prose with never a clunking... Read more
Published 2 days ago by marionq
Unusual storyline
The novel appeared to be about actors and actresses and infidelity but as the story progressed (with a lot of groundwork) it was more about the 1st World War, everything tying in... Read more
Published 2 days ago by JansManor
Very well written wartime spy novel
A gripping and fascinating wartime spy story from William Boyd. The start is a little slow, although still well written, but it sets the grounding for a compelling second two... Read more
Published 4 days ago by BookWorm
Literary let-down
This book begins so well with its evocation of pre-war Vienna. Then about a third of the way through something goes horribly wrong. Read more
Published 9 days ago by Adrianburke
Engaging, fun and well written...but not Boyd at his best.
William Boyd has the ability as a novelist to give the reader something more than a few hours of engaging story telling. Read more
Published 14 days ago by Bad Panda
More is Less
Not one of William Boyd's better ones, I'm afraid. He seems obsessed with bringing new twists and surprises into the narrative to the extent that before long, you don't... Read more
Published 14 days ago by A Byrne
Another great read from Boyd
This book was instantly readable from the first page. Boyd's economy of words creates a page turner with substance. Read more
Published 18 days ago by Gradiate
Waiting for sunrise
New author to me - I was very impressed - really enjoyed the book - will soon be ordering another by this author - "The Dream Lover" _ Short Stories .
Published 19 days ago by EBJ1007X
Disappointed.
My first William Boyd - and I am not encouraged to read another.
We certainly got a bit of everything thrown in & it was all brilliantly written - but to what purpose? Read more
Published 20 days ago by MISS HAVISHAM READ IT
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