Iris and Ruby

I loved this and was hooked from the first page. An easy bedtime or holiday read, it's the intertwining stories of a lonely old lady cared for by two ageing servants and her feisty granddaughter who arrives unannounced on her doorstep.

Iris lives among faded memories which she dreads losing forever as her mind slowly deteriorates. Her immediate reaction to Ruby's presence is to send her straight back to her mother in England, but she becomes attached to the girl and allows her to stay.

Her story is richly evocative of wartime Cairo and as romantic and sad as `Brief Encounter'. It was this era that fascinated me most, but Ruby's development from rebellious, swearing teenager, and the nuances of mother/daughter relationships were equally well drawn and became just as absorbing.

To anyone who enjoys a warm, well-written romantic read with a bustling sense of place I'd thoroughly recommend it.

Take me back to Cairo!! (2/2 people found this helpful)

As someone who has been to Cairo on several occasions and loves the place A friend recommended this as a possible read. I picked the book up and couldn't put it down. Life inconveniently kept getting in the way but I managed to read it in under a week, which is good for me. Now I have finished it I really want to read it all again. The authors story takes me back to modern Cairo with great accuracy but also gives me enough to conjure up what it would have been like back in War Time. They way the book is written made me believe in the characters and want to be more involved with them as the book progressed. It was not too slushy or to the other extreme too serious. It is not the kind of book I would usually have picked up by I recommend it to anyone who like me has a love of Eygpt, personal interest or just a damn good story!!

A spectacular novel! (1/1 people found this helpful)

I have never read a Rosie Thomas book before. Now I am going to go out and buy all of them. Iris and Ruby is a spectacular romantic read about a doomed epic love that shaped a woman's life so proufoundly that even nearing death she clings to her memories of a bygone time and the life that should have been - telling her stories to her granddaughter, who absorbs them with a quiet fascination - the bond between them slowly growing to the heartbreaking end. Iris's story is told to her granddaughter who goes to Cairo looking for the grandmother she never knew, and finds a mesmerizing history that explains a lot about who she is and the family she has come from. I loved this book. I can't tell you how much. I cried to the point of howling tears at the end. Rosie Thomas is a truly gifted storyteller who weaves a description of wartime and modern day Cairo that unfolds colourfully before my eyes. Interestingly, the book is told in first and third person, switching often between the two. Yet the result is a captivating, because Thomas is such a skilled storyteller. I was so disappointed to get to the end. There are some books that are good but leave little impression, and then there are some books that we know we'll never forget - this is one of them.

Good in parts (1/1 people found this helpful)

I found the first third of this book rather slow to get into as it moved between the two characters. The grandmother's tale of her frantic/romantically intense time with her war time lover in Cairo was a little 'Mills and Boon' in parts. The contemporary tale of the grandaughter escaping a personal tragedy then gradually moving to the next stage of maturity through her newly-gained relationship with her grandmother was a little more interesting. However, as the two stories came together, my interest in that story developed. There is a particular scene in which Iris and Ruby are in a dangerous, life-threatening situation and this, for me, was the turning point of the novel. From then on the characters became more 'real' and the storyline flew. I am glad I read it and it had certain resonances for me in terms of relationships between older and younger women which can go either way... to be a destroying experience or to develop everyone in the relationship. I would read another book by this author.

Fantastic - Don't Miss It! (3/3 people found this helpful)

I really loved this book.

The writing is fantastic and you really can smell and feel the atmosphere of bustling Cairo.

There was not one dull moment and it is one of those books that you can't wait to read the ending but also sad that it has finished.
The characters are realistic, they are not always entirely lovable but this book really does make you consider and cherish your own family relationships.

This book lightened my life whilst I was reading it - thoroughly recommended!

Rosie Thomas

Reader Reviews:

Pure escapism (0/0 people found this helpful)

Take me back to Cairo!! (2/2 people found this helpful)

A spectacular novel! (1/1 people found this helpful)

Good in parts (1/1 people found this helpful)

Fantastic - Don't Miss It! (3/3 people found this helpful)

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