Faringdon Folly (Restitution)

Restitution--a new novel by Eliza Graham

"People are like rivers, they have no nationality but take on the nature of the terrain they pass through. No human spirit can be confined to a single state."

This is just one excerpt of the cleverly tailored new novel 'Restitution' by local author Eliza Graham

'Restitution' is the story of Alix, the aristocratic daughter of a German resistance fighter, who, in the wake of World War Two, is desperate to flee her home before the Red Army comes to revenge itself on Eastern Germany. On the last night in her own home she encounters unexpected visitors. By morning one is missing and one dead. Confused and afraid Alix finally runs for her own life. Although the war has ended, the fight for survival is only just beginning for Alix, and the mystery of that terrible night takes another sixty years to unfurl.

Although the storyline leaps back and forth through the many decades covered, this is carefully orchestrated leaving the reader enthusiastic for more. Overall, the story is written with an inherent intelligence and understanding, with unexpected surprises around every corner. The characters are three-dimensional and the storyline exudes the horrors and heroism in this tale of survival, love and betrayal.

Eliza has been working on this, her second novel, for some time, and has visited Pomerania, as part of her research. During the course of this she has studied many memoirs written by Polish and German civilians.

When asked what inspired Eliza to write this novel, her reply was, "A long time ago I had German friends who fled eastern Germany when the Russians came in. I'd always been intersted in that period of German history, the very end of the war and the period immediately after. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have grown up in a country that had been invaded from both sides and was (understandably) considered a pariah state and which had been reduced to rubble, in the case of many Germany cities. ALthough I could see why the Russians felt such hatred for the Germans, my response to Soviet treatment of German civilians was repulsion. I started wondering what it would be like to be a young girl coming of age in that period of history'.

'Restitution' by Eliza Graham was published by Macmillan in September 2008.

Waterstones Quarterly

Alix seeks refuge in her deserted ancestral home and is amazed to find her childhood sweetheart, Gregor, there. Two more fugitives arrive but by dawn they are gone and Gregor gone. As the Red Army advances, Alix flees. A story of courage and betrayal during the death throes of the Third Reich.

The Big Issue (North)

September 2008
Restitution

With Europe ravaged in the closing stages of world war two, Russia's advancing Red Army causes the civilian population of Germany to flee in terror. Alix, the aristocratic daughter of a German resistance fighter, is the sole survivor of a brutal attack and begins an incredible but heartbreaking journey.


Alex Donohue

Brighton Argus

Brighton Argus
Playing with the Moon
Eliza Graham
Pan Macmillan

Minna and Tom rent a cottage in a small village near Dorset, hoping the change of scene will help them deal with the recent loss of their son.

Exploring the beach, the unearth a skeleton that belonged to an American GI posted there during the Second World War. What seems to be nothing more than a strange discovery starts having a deeper impact on Minna, as she traces the GI's history with the help of a local woman she befriends.

The story is engaging, with time divided equally between past and present day. Although the ending won't surprise, it makes for an emotional read.

The Irish Book Review

STRANGE MEETINGS

Playing with the Moon

Eliza Graham

Autumn 2007

Eliza Graham's first novel, Playing with the Moon, is an intricately plotted work, shifting between the present and past, and between two different narrative voices, Minna, guilt ridden over the death of her young son in a car accident and trying, not very hard, to save her two-year marriage, tells her own story. The story of Felix, short for Felicity, her childhood, the events leading up to the tragedy in 1943 and the long-term consequences of that tragedy, is told in the third person. These two narratives intersect early on through the Dorset setting itself--Felix's childhood home, Rosebank House, now a restored holiday home rented by the young couple,and through the discovery of the skeleton of a missing GI from the Second World War.

The intersections and interweaving of past and present are carefully worked, as the details about the tragedies from which all the characters are trying to recover are slowly released. Minna and Tom's macabre discovery of the skeleton on the beach in the first chapter of the novel becomes both motif and metaphor for both narratives, which start off with a series of unknowns and connect as the characters work through loss, mourning and the possibility of survival.

Of the two plots, the discovery of the dead GI is initially more compelling, partly because it is clear early on that it is a murder mystery and that the adult Felix knows more about it than even her childhood memories allow. The story of the skeleton, as it is unravelled, is the story of a traumatic and life-changing period in Felix's childhood and it touches on the history of the training black American soldiers for the Normandy landings,evacuation and the commandeering of a remote village by the MOD. On the other hand, Minna's growing obsession with the dead soldier seems at odds at times with her grieving and self destructive frame of mind, manifesting itself through her refusal to eat.

While the intersections of the past and present are well paced, the plot does verge on the breathless at times,especially in the Felix narrative, which touches not only on racist attitudes and murder, but hidden identities,marriages of convenience,gay sex, blackmail,abortion and more. Ends are tied up neatly -- perhaps too neatly. But in its attempt to capture forgotten fragments of history through Felix's story and the devastating impact of the loss of a child through Minna's story,the novel is probing, sensitive and moving.