Waiting for Sunrise

 by William Boyd. Celebrated English literary virtuoso Boyd creates an express-train read. Once you're on board, you won't even think about stopping until the last page is turned. Lysander Reif, a stylish London actor with no illusions about emulating his late, revered actor father, is engaged to an actress; attentive to his aristocratic, half-Austrian mother; and close to his stalwart explorer uncle, who is living rather scandalously with his young, black male lover. If only Lysander could rid himself of his cursed sexual dysfunction. Hoping that the talking cure pioneered by Sigmund Freud will do the trick, he travels to Vienna, where he is happy to find an English analyst. His treatment is a raging success, but it precipitates a dire entanglement with sexy bohemian artist Hettie Bull. As WWI erupts, and his folly leads to his forcible recruitment into a dangerous spy-hunting mission, Lysander soon distrusts everyone, including his mother, and discovers that his acting skills give him a crucial edge. Boyd's delectably mercurial characters, astute use of this complex historical milieu and the dawn of psychoanalysis, superbly torqued plot, and exceptionally evocative language that is, by turns, lush and tensile, witty and wrenching coalesce into a long, dark night of the soul that has his resurgent, ultimately transformed hero waiting for sunrise. Sunrise and clarity. --Booklist (Check Catalog)