Readings Newsletter
Become a Readings Member to make your shopping experience even easier.
Sign in or sign up for free!
You’re not far away from qualifying for FREE standard shipping within Australia
You’ve qualified for FREE standard shipping within Australia
The cart is loading…
Out of place at boarding school, scholarship girl Evelyn Varley realises that the only way for her to fit in is to be like everyone else. She hides her true self and what she really thinks behind the manners and attitudes of those around her. By the time she graduates from Oxford University in 1939, ambitious and brilliant Evelyn has perfected her performance.
War is looming. Evelyn soon finds herself recruited to MI5, and the elite counterintelligence department of Bennett White, the enigmatic spy-runner. Recognising Evelyn’s mercurial potential, White schools her in observation and subterfuge and assigns her the dangerous task of infiltrating an underground group of Nazi sympathisers working to form an alliance with Germany.
But befriending people to betray them isn’t easy, no matter how dark their intent. Evelyn is drawn deeper into a duplicity of her own making, where truth and lies intertwine, and her increasing distrust of everyone, including herself, begins to test her better judgement. When a close friend becomes dangerously ensnared in her mission, Evelyn’s loyalty is pushed to breaking point, forcing her to make an impossible decision.
A powerfully insightful and luminous portrait of courage and loyalty, and the sacrifices made in their name.
$9.00 standard shipping within Australia
FREE standard shipping within Australia for orders over $100.00
Express & International shipping calculated at checkout
Out of place at boarding school, scholarship girl Evelyn Varley realises that the only way for her to fit in is to be like everyone else. She hides her true self and what she really thinks behind the manners and attitudes of those around her. By the time she graduates from Oxford University in 1939, ambitious and brilliant Evelyn has perfected her performance.
War is looming. Evelyn soon finds herself recruited to MI5, and the elite counterintelligence department of Bennett White, the enigmatic spy-runner. Recognising Evelyn’s mercurial potential, White schools her in observation and subterfuge and assigns her the dangerous task of infiltrating an underground group of Nazi sympathisers working to form an alliance with Germany.
But befriending people to betray them isn’t easy, no matter how dark their intent. Evelyn is drawn deeper into a duplicity of her own making, where truth and lies intertwine, and her increasing distrust of everyone, including herself, begins to test her better judgement. When a close friend becomes dangerously ensnared in her mission, Evelyn’s loyalty is pushed to breaking point, forcing her to make an impossible decision.
A powerfully insightful and luminous portrait of courage and loyalty, and the sacrifices made in their name.
In writing this review I simply can’t ignore the fact that 2021 will mark the 70th anniversary of the defections of Soviet agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean across the Iron Curtain. Both were high-ranking double agents embedded in the upper echelons of the British civil service. These two, along with Antony Blunt, John Cairncross and Kim Philby, were all recruited while at Cambridge University in the 1930s. The growing threat of fascism, civil war in Spain and the decline of the aristocracy in the UK were all factors that drove men and women into the clandestine world, and the shadow cast by World War II and the Cold War continues to influence writers.
Over the last decade, there has been a noticeable presence of female voices in the espionage fiction genre, including Jennie Rooney, Charlotte Philby (Kim Philby’s granddaughter), Kate Atkinson and Natasha Walter. Rebecca Starford’s new World War II spy thriller, The Imitator, is another welcome addition to the espionage canon, capturing the look and bustle of wartime London, as well as the anxiety and dread associated with the occupation. Bored of her job in ladies’ fashion, Evelyn, a young Oxford graduate, embarks on a new career as a spy working for MI5. Evelyn never did quite fit into the social circles at boarding school or university, and the mask-wearing and deceit in these settings make her a natural candidate for clandestine work. However, the deeper the infiltration, the greater the cost, and the harder it is to distinguish friend from foe, obscuring true objectives. Readers will know of Starford through her work as co-founder of Kill Your Darlings and her memoir about bullying, Bad Behaviour. The Imitator is a bold character study from a versatile and adept writer.
Travel to Ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy to the trenches of war, with these incredible historical reads.