Interrogating Ellie, by Julian Gray
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Interrogating Ellie, by Julian Gray
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On the eve of World War II a naïve young woman makes a fateful decision: she will abandon her British citizenship and go to live in Nazi Austria. When her marriage breaks down and she finds herself alone in an enemy land, her passionate, restless nature drives her in a struggle for survival against the odds. Who can she trust? And ultimately, who can she love? Interrogating Ellie is based on a true story. Readers’ reactions: "This is one of the best-written books I have reviewed… Everything about Ellie works and we root for her against the odds." Historical Novel Society “A page-turner. I read it in one day.” “Absorbing, compelling, riveting. It was 3am and I couldn’t put it down.” “This was an excellent story, with unexpected twists and turns, well developed and interesting characters. The detail was fascinating – the lives, the clothes, the food were all well researched. What I found most fascinating was that the story was told from the point of view of ordinary people in Austria. I have always been intrigued to know how ordinary citizens came to terms with the way of life imposed on them, the compromises and moral decisions that people were forced to make. It was very true to life.” “This book was worth writing.” “I found it really absorbing and fascinating all the way through. It’s an extraordinary story and held me strongly throughout. Very moving. She was a real fighter and survivor. I’d love to hear more about her.” “I remember the last time I saw Ellie. Interrogating Ellie brought her to life again for me.”
Interrogating Ellie, by Julian Gray- Amazon Sales Rank: #69940 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-03-07
- Released on: 2015-03-07
- Format: Kindle eBook
About the Author Julian Gray has written numerous non-fiction books and articles under another name. He lives in London.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. A thought-provoking, and true, tale of survival in wartime Austria By Mike Robbins I should start with a disclaimer: I know Julian Gray. One should always disclose this when writing a review. But more to the point, because I know him, I also know that this extraordinary book – although written as a novel – is substantially true. Julian Gray is a pen-name, and with good reason, as this is a story that could still have the power to hurt people, even though it took place over 70 years ago; those who appear in the book are mostly now dead, but their children are not.Interrogating Ellie is both well-researched and extremely readable. It is the story of Eloise, or Ellie, Picot (not her real name). She was born in St Helier, in the Channel Islands, in 1916. She and her brother were the illegitimate children of a teenage mother, who had been banished to Birmingham by her family. Eloise remained in Jersey. She was brought up by foster-parents, and eventually found a job as a waitress at a local hotel. In 1934 she met a fellow hotel-worker, and in 1938, having just had their first child, they moved to his home town in Austria and moved in with his family. Ellie took Austrian (actually by now Reich) citizenship. Before long, her marriage broke down, and the family kept her baby daughters. Eloise Picot was 25, alone, with no means of support, in a country of which she was nominally a national but which was actually at war with her own. But she had two things on her side – she was attractive, and she was not a fool. For the next seven years, through the war and the post-war occupation, she would live on her wits.Ellie did – after some difficulty – return to Britain (although not to Jersey) in 1948, and in the 1950s she remarried and settled in the south of England. She had several more children, of which Gray was one. He and his siblings knew the bare bones of her life-story, and also that they had half-sisters in Austria, but Ellie did not talk about the war, except to blurt out the odd fact. She died in 1973, and the story of her life in wartime Vienna might have been forgotten had her eldest British daughter not chanced to have business at the Public Records Office in Kew, south-west London, in 2013. She knew that Ellie had had to reapply for British citizenship after the war, and decided, while there, to ask if there was a file on her mother. There was, and she was taken aback by its contents.In response to her application, Ellie had been interviewed by the British Field Security Service (FSS) in Klagenfurt. They established that, after some twists and turns, she had gone to ground in Vienna and remained there for the rest of the war. Exactly what she had done there was not clear. The FSS transcripts, however, were damning, suggesting among other things that she had slept her way to survival. An internal Home Office memo stated that: “This woman is of bad character ... I submit that we refuse to grant a renaturalisation certificate.” It was refused. However, in a curious and very English compromise, the Home Office stated that her bad character was not sufficient to bar her from being granted a visa.So what had Ellie been up to in wartime Vienna that so upset the FSS? Using their reports on Ellie (parts of which are still redacted), Gray has pieced together the story of a hand-to-mouth life. Best not to give too much away; suffice to say that Ellie learned how to handle herself, and got through the war, although not without trouble. And although she may have used (but not abused) men, she also had a genuine gift for friendship, if Gray’s account is to be believed. It is a gripping story, and Gray has written it very well. I found myself on the edge of my seat as I read it, and totally forgot that I was reading a real person’s story; it reads more like a thriller. It helps that Gray’s style is simple and unsensational. This is a tight, clean account.How much is true? It mostly fits the facts Gray has – from the FSS transcripts, and from his own enquiries in Austria in 2014. However, he has invented or changed some things in order to construct a narrative. Thus he has Ellie in a relationship with one Mayer, an Austrian Wehrmacht officer who is part of the anti-Nazi underground. In fact, Mayer is based on a man called Carl Szokoll, who was real enough, and was in Vienna at the time; but there is no reason to believe they met. (There is also no proof they didn’t.) In real life, Ellie and her Austrian husband had not two but three daughters before they split. A friend killed in an air raid, a Dutchwoman, was also a real person and in this case Ellie did know her, but in real life she didn’t die that way. Is all this all right?I think it is. There is little here that could not have happened, and Gray is clear about what he knows, and what he has had to invent; he explains all on the website he has set up for the book. In any case, like all good books (and this is a very good book), Interrogating Ellie is about more than the story it relates. As Gray has said on the website: “When I first read the file that delivered the British government’s verdict on my mother’s moral character, it upset me ...But as I say in the book, I realised I had to just try to understand what led up to those judgements. ..I do still wonder, though, about the people who wrote those judgements in the file ...What were their lives like, I wonder?”It is a fair question. Ellie was one step away from forced labour or a concentration camp. She may have slept with those who could protect her, but there is no evidence that she hurt them, or anyone else. Today, more than ever, one could wonder about the lives of those who grant or withhold the right to remain; and how they would fare were they to seek it.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. gripping look @ one woman's survival of WWII By Sarah L. Gruwell Wow what a story! I think this is the book’s greatest feature, a woman’s struggle to survive and thrive in a country foreign to her and that only gets more so for her as time goes on. Knowing that it’s based on true events made the narrative even more engrossing. I found myself gripped by the different hardships Ellie encountered and seeing how she rose to meet each challenge to emerge stronger on the other side.Ellie’s grit and tact for survival is something to behold. I don’t think I’ve come across a character as deft at changing with her environment as she. She’s able to adapt to whoever is in power (German, Russian, or British) and create situations which help her in survival. She’s portrayed as a flawed human who does what she needs to and isn’t sorry for it. While at times, these flaws almost went to the extreme of making her unlikable; overall, I found her very relatable to myself. I got to wondering what I would have done in her place.I liked the format in which the story was told. For the most part, it’s a straightforward fictional narrative telling Ellie’s tale. Yet, interspersed within that narrative are snatches of her interrogation report in her struggle to re-apply for British citizenship, letters written by various parties detailing the events in the story, and various memos that also relate her overall story. These different formats give the story a depth and foundation in the events that inspired the story, making it richer and the reader more engaged.I do, however, wish the book could have ended better. Not in the content, but with how it was written. The ending seems very choppy and sudden. Everything is wrapped up in an epilogue that contains phrases like “this happened”, “they went here”, and “she did that”. A bund of “told” scenes in the very end give this book an almost unfinished atmosphere as it closes on Ellie’s rich story and WWII life.With a rich story and a narrator that seems very real, this book is a gripping portrayal of one woman’s struggle to survive the war years in what could be considered enemy territory despite her marriage. She shows her resourcefulness and sheer will to create a life for herself despite incredible odds. I was spellbound by her journey. The ending, however, leaves something to be desired. The reader is dropped out of the conclusion with an epilogue that just tells you what happens, not showing anything. So a great book all around until you get to the end.Book: Book received for free from publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful. An enthralling wartime story of a woman displaced by life events and also a study in relationships. By Dr R. A masterly piece of work, this fictionalised true story of the eponymous Ellie is a book with two layers. The first, more obvious one, is the narration of a tale of circumstance. A story that richly shows how the smallest of decisions and the tiniest of life’s twists and turns can have major implications. How an ordinary person can slip into different and often less than desirable situations through a simple domino-ing of events that could have happened more or less to any one of us had we been in similar circumstances. Indeed at times I felt a strong empathy with Ellie precisely because I imagined that I might have done similarly in some situations had I been in her shoes. The second layer is a tale of consequences, and of how a person’s life experiences can shape their own personality, character and life situation, and then that of their children. This layer is compellingly introduced in the first few pages, therefore sensitising the reader in their journey through the remainder of the book. The adolescent Ellie is herself a product of unfortunate experiences. Some aspects of her character that were criticised by her interrogator at the start of the book and then later might nowadays have been treated more sympathetically as reactions to trauma, abuse and other events. The author, Ellie’s son, has handled these aspects, and indeed the more questionable and colourful of Ellie’s actions and behaviours, with sensitivity yet honesty, so that I waivered throughout between empathy and disapproval – an achievement of the author since no-one should be considered in black and white.In terms of writing style, the author has managed something very well paced and never boring and I found myself wondering what the next chapter might hold, between reads. The beginning of each chapter gives the reader both an immediate sense of Ellie’s movement through place and time, and the feeling that there is lots of interest to follow. My interest was further sustained by the author’s successful deployment of different writing techniques to break up the narrative and avoid monotony. Thus there were for example excerpts from correspondence that were used to move the story along and also served to remind the reader that this story is based on facts. The fictional elements of the narrative added depth to the story and the whole was well researched.Despite being so well crafted, the book makes little use of descriptive prose. Thus for example, sentences describing the mountains of Austria are sufficiently illustrative for you to understand exactly how they might look, but they are brief and used simply to place you in the spot rather than to evoke emotion. This worked for me and it kept the story moving along nicely, but it may not suit all readers. I also agree with another reviewer that the epilogue is in parts less well-crafted than the rest, though it is nonetheless satisfactory and honest.I can just see this being snapped up for a film, it has all the right elements and is absolutely jam packed with happenings. It’s a strong first novel and I look forward to the next from this author.
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