Synopsis:
The unexpected arrival of her willful teenage granddaughter, Ruby, brings life and disorder to 82-year-old Iris Black’s old house in Cairo. Ruby, driven by her fraught relationship with her own mother to run away from England, is seeking refuge with the grandmother she hasn’t seen for years.
An unlikely bond develops between them, as Ruby helps Iris to record her fading memories of the glittering, cosmopolitan Cairo of World War II, and of her one true love–the enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneux–whom she lost to the ravages of conflict.
This long-ago love has shaped Iris’s life, and, as becomes increasingly apparent, those of her daughter and her granddaughter. And it is to affect them all, again, in ways they could not have imagined.
Rating: 5 stars
Review:
Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas is a woman’s fiction novel that features that joys and sorrows of life. It dragged me instantly into life back then during World War II and then back to the present moment in the same Egyptian city. Cario. Iris goes about telling her 19-year-old granddaughter about her memories of her life while she still can…Ruby feels that helping her grandmother is something special…in just the time they are together the bond between these two women grow and tugs as readers hearts. Absolutely stunning and beautifully enchanting to read. Traveling far away without ever having to leave home and finding wisdom that comes with age as well as romance all inside this brilliant tale. Rosie Thomas is a writer whose talent shines with every page. I was lost immediately as the pages began turning and the story swallowed me up whole and took me along the two women’s journeys. Overall, I would highly recommend this story to all.
Urban Book Reviews 