What is the devastating effect on your life when, through no fault of your
own, you lose everything - home, family, friends, job, reputation,
passport, money, credit cards, mobile phone - and you can never get them
back? This is what happens to a young man called Adam Kindred, one May
evening in Chelsea, London, when a freakish series of malign accidents and
a split-second decision turns his life upside down for ever. The police are
searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is
stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in the huge, pitiless modern city.
Adam has nowhere to go but down - underground. He decides to join that vast
army of the disappeared and the missing that throng the lowest level of
London's population as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and
struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so
spectacularly. His quest will take him all along the River Thames, from
affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End, and on the way he
encounters all manner of London's denizens - aristocrats, prostitutes,
priests and policewomen amongst them - and version after new version of
himself. William Boyd's electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year
Restlessis a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social
identity, the scandal of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in
the filthy underbelly of every city.