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• William Boyd’s latest novel, <i>Waiting for Sunrise,</i> effortlessly mixes genres to create an outstanding, gripping, and highly pleasurable reading experience. This novel will certainly not disappoint Boyd’s legions of international fans who expect the best from this master literary craftsman. <i>Waiting for Sunrise</i> is primarily an atmospheric thriller set in Vienna, London, and Geneva from 1913 to 1915; there are also brief scenes in the front line trenches of World War I. But this is a thriller wrapped within a complex espionage tale, and all that enveloped inside a sophisticated and intellectually stimulating psychological character study with serious universal themes about the human condition. I should also mention that there’s a lots of steamy sex scenes and themes that are integral to the plot. Indeed, it all adds up to a saucy and riveting page-turner. As usual, and as an added bonus to his highly educated and well-read literary audience, this latest book contains a goodly number of literary and academic references that challenge the mind, delight the intellect, and provide irony and humor.Like two of his previous recent novels (<i>Any Human Heart</i> and <i>Restless</i>), this one deals with an inexperienced everyday sort of person who is forced by unusual circumstances to become a spy. In this new book, the central character is Lysander Rief, a second-rate actor from a famous acting family who travels to Vienna in 1913 to seek a cure for an embarrassing sexual problem. There he undergoes a treatment with one of Freud’s disciples and stumbles into a passionate affair with a <i>femme fatale</i> sculptor who he meets in the psychiatrist’s office. The affair takes some unusual turns, and he is eventually unjustly accused of rape and seriously looking at the prospect of ten years in prison. Fortunately, the British Government helps to disentangle Lysander from his legal predicament by assisting in his covert flight from Vienna. In return, Lysander is forced to put his acting talents to use as a spy to pay back his debt to the War Office. His job is to help find a traitor, code-named Andromeda, who is sending valuable military information to the enemy from deep within the British high command. At the beginning of the book, Lysander is introduced as a not-very-good actor, recently seen on the London stage as the "second leading man" in a third-rate play. But, once he is forced to use his acting talents as a spy, we find that he has a natural gift for disguises, deceit, and deception. When circumstances require, he also manages the psychological mettle to torture another human being in order to get information vital to guarantee his own life and further the well-being of his Government’s interests. As a matter of fact, he finds his calling on the stage of life, and we are all left to ponder if we, too, might succeed if history came calling.What is best about this book is the author’s close attention to atmospheric detail. Boyd’s craft is at its finest when he is recreating the sights, sounds, smells and feel of life in Vienna, London, and Geneva at the beginning of World War I. Since the book is a thriller, it is easy to want to read quickly through these details in order to get on with the action. My recommendation is to hold back and savor the details. In fact, this is the type of novel that is so full of atmospheric, psychological, and intellectual detail that, upon finishing it, some readers may immediately want to turn around and reread it again. That’s the beauty of Boyd! Savor him.Any new book by William Boyd is an event. This one is pure pleasure. Don’t miss it![Caveat: if you are looking merely for another action-packed thriller espionage novel, you might be thrown off by how carefully Boyd creates a vivid sense of place and takes great pains to give his characters depth and life. Although this novel will, no doubt, hold your interest, you may be thrown off by how slow the action moves at times when Boyd is attending to details.]

  5.00 out of 5

  msbaba

• What a fantastic year this is turning out to be, as far as books are concerned. This is certainly another winner from Boyd. It bears many of the characteristics of his most successful works - the use parallel texts to allow for different perspectives, the gradual uncovering of characters' secret histories and even (briefly) wrongful imprisonment vaguely reminiscent of "Any Human Heart".The novel opens in 1913 with principal character Lysander Rief, a moderately successful actor who is just beginning to make a name for himself on the London stage, living in Vienna where he has travelled for the purpose of accessing psychoanalytical help with an embarrassing and difficult "condition". He is persuaded by his analyst, Dr Bensimon, to maintain a diary or commonplace book, as a means for cathartic chronicling of his progress. While attending one of his appointments with Dr Bensimon Rief encoutners Hester "Hettie" Bull with whom he promptly falls deeply in love, despite his hitherto plangent letters to his fiance Blanche who has remained in London. As luck would have it at Dr Bensimon's surgery he also encounters Alwyn Munro who is a special attache at the British Embassy in Vienna. This acquaintance will shortly prove very fortuitous as things are about to go very wrong.After an unexpectedly adventurous departure from Vienna Rief finds himself back in London where he tries to resume his acting career, before becoming immersed in Britain's war effort. After having signed up to the East Sussex Light Infantry, and spent some time guarding an internment camp, his former acquaintances catch up with him, and he finds himself reassigned to very different activities, with wholly unexpected consequences.As ever with William Boyd, the plot is entirely believable and the characters immensely plausible. He seems to go from strength to strength!

  4.50 out of 5

  Eyejaybee

• This is a book about identity. The central character remains elusive and changeable despite being written from a third person point of view, a first person point of view, psychoanalysed and twice observed from another first person viewpoint at the beginning and end of the work. It is not certain if the narrator is likeable and this appears to be part of the overall point. Dramatically, the story is well plotted but structurally and thematically it is something of a collision between worlds - a pre-war Viennese drama and a Le Carre style spy thriller. Perhaps because of this, and perhaps because the idea that identity is malleable is not enough of an insight to carry a book, the work left me feeling as if I had been brought on a journey to nowhere and left there without a ticket home.

  4.00 out of 5

  freelancer_frank

• It is William Boyd. It is part spy novel, part a tale of one man's personal development. You don't really need to be told therefore, this is a good book, pacy, interesting and well written. No, isn't quite up to the stand of Any Human Heart, The New Confessions or Restless, but it is still a cut above most things you'll read this year. Enjoy.

  4.00 out of 5

  YossarianXeno

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