IRIS & RUBY by ROSIE THOMAS

IRIS & RUBY

BY ROSIE THOMAS

THE BLURB:-

A richly textured story of love, loss and the distance between three generations of one family.

The unexpected arrival of her wilful 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 Two, and of her one true love- the enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneux- whom she lost to the ravages of the conflict.

The long-ago love has shaped Iris's life, and, as becomes increasingly apparent, those of her daughter and granddaughter. And it is to affect them all, again, in ways they could not have imagined.

THE REALITY:-

This got pushed to the bottom of the pile as I found the title rather uninspiring, even though flowery Iris and bejewelled Ruby are pretty names. But, after reading the book, I think that to call this novel anything else would be unnecessary and perhaps extravagant, as this book is about relationships- both between mothers and daughters- and, particularly, the new bond between a grandmother and her granddaughter.

This was not a novel without discrepancies- on page 132 it states that Iris's daughter Lesley was born in 1954, but on 382 it mentions that she was born in 1950. Hmm. We are learning this via the character of Iris, who is 82 and finding recalling memories difficult, but this looks like a mistake to me, and not a written example of Iris's forgetfulness.

I loved the theme of memories being compared to a cup on the shelf; one that you can reach for and pull down to enter a period of reminiscence, only sometimes that cup is not there and the memory is lost, if only temporarily.

Cairo during the war made for a very interesting, glittering backdrop to Iris's love affair with Xan Molyneux, which we knew, from the blurb at the back, didn't last as he was killed fighting in the desert. I can empathise with her heartbreak as she lost the man she loved and then lost their child which she was carrying. That part made me cry a river, so this was certainly a novel which touched me. Iris's society friends made for an colourful read too, and I liked that this novel made a comparison of rich and poor Cairo, with Ruby's relationship with Ash giving us a clear view of the latter.

I did enjoy the variety of different personalities displayed in this work and felt that they were all important to the development of the novel, with no one person superfluous to requirements. I've always wanted to visit Eqypt and see the pyramids and a sphinx or two. As a child, I was always fascinated by the Sahara Desert as the atlas my father owned showed a picture of its miles and miles of lonely, undulating sand. As a kid, I wanted to go and live there but, as an adult, I'll settle for a holiday! I did, however find the 'lost in the desert' section of the story a bit drawn out.

Spoiler alert- Iris ends up dying, which is a bit of a shame. It would have been nice to see a bit more of relationship development between herself, Lesley and Ruby. But, hey-ho, a novel has to end up somewhere and I hope Iris was reunited with Xan, the one great love of her life. See, this book obviously touched me as I'm confusing reality with fiction! A good read and I'd like to read more by this author.