Customer Reviews
Pure escapism - By: Suzie, 16 Aug 2008 
I loved this & 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 & 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 motherin England, but she becomes attached to the girl & allows her to stay.
Her story is richly evocative of wartime Cairo & as romantic & sad as `Brief Encounter'. It was this era that fascinated me most, but Ruby's development from rebellious, swearing teenager, & the nuances of mother/daughter relationships were equally well drawn & 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!! - By: S. Drew, 15 Feb 2008 As someone who has been to Cairo on several occasions & loves the place A friend recommended this as a possible read. I picked the book up & couldn't put it down. Life inconveniently kept gettingin the way but I managed to read itin 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 backin War Time. They way the book is written made me believein the characters & 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! - By: Avid Reader, 05 Nov 2007 I have never read a Rosie Thomas book before. Now I am going to go out & buy all of them. Iris & 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 & 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, & finds a mesmerizing history that explains a lot about who she is & 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 & modern day Cairo that unfolds colourfully before my eyes. Interestingly, the book is toldin first & 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, & then there are some books that we know we'll never forget - this is one of them.
Good in parts - By: Isabelle, 03 Nov 2007 
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 loverin Cairo was a little 'Mills & 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 interestin that story developed. There is a particular scenein which Iris & Ruby arein a dangerous, life-threatening situation & this, for me, was the turning point of the novel. From then on the characters became more 'real' & the storyline flew. I am glad I read it & it had certain resonances for mein terms of relationships between older & younger women which can go either way... to be a destroying experience or to develop everyonein the relationship. I would read another book by this author.
Fantastic - Don't Miss It! - By: Ms. D. Callaway, 14 Aug 2007 I really loved this book.
The writing is fantastic & you really can smell & feel the atmosphere of bustling Cairo.
There was not one dull moment & 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 & cherish your own family relationships.
This book lightened my life whilst I was reading it - thoroughly recommended!
