"I remember.
And even as I say the words aloud in the silent room and hear the whisper dying away in the shadows of the house, I realize that it's not true.
Because I don't, I can't remember.
I am old, and I am beginning to forget things."

Iris and Ruby is a novel about memories - both creating them and recalling them. Iris is an 82 year old doctor living in Cairo with two aged servants, in poor health and realizing that she is losing important memories of her younger years. She is estranged from her daughter who lives in England with her family and has few friends. Then Ruby, her 19 year old grand-daughter shows up at her door to escape her family. Ruby is adrift in her life, unsure of which direction to go and decided that maybe she would find answers in Cairo. Ruby quickly understands that her grandmother is trying to recall her past memories and decides to help her by listening to stories from her past.

The novel moves seamlessly between present day Cairo and the Cairo of WWII when Iris first arrived. The author's descriptions of the city are fantastic - you can almost see the glittering parties and party dresses of the 40s along with the present day market place teaming with people and items for sale. Through Iris's stories of her past, it becomes apparent what formed her into the person she is in the present. There are romances - both in the 40s with Iris and in the present day with Ruby. There is a lot of family drama between mother and daughter - Iris with her daughter Lesley and Ruby with her mother. Through it all, Iris and Ruby create a bond that transcends time.

This is a fantastic multi-generational novel and it takes place in an exciting part of the world. I loved this book and will remember these two characters long after the last page.
(The novel was given to me by the author for a fair and honest review) ( )

Excellent book from dvg's wishlist that I ordered to read first, before passing along. Ruby is a 19 yo British girl, not getting along with her family. So, she spontaneously flies to Cairo to live with her 82 yo grandmother Iris. The story vacillates between Ruby learning about modern day Cairo and falling in love with the Egyptian taxi driver's brother, Ash. And Iris' memories of her great love of a soldier during WWII and the German's push through Africa, which was part of the war that isn't written about very often. The descriptions of the area were vivid and quite well interwoven with the story. You could visualize the upper-class Cairo that Iris was born into, the parties that the expat's gave, the lesser areas where the pooer lived and the desert sands that drew Xan and his bedouin guide to show Iris. ( )

Wilful 19-year-old Ruby runs away from England and finds her way to her 82-year-old grandmother, Iris, in Cairo. Her unexpected arrival is like a breath of fresh air to the lonely, older woman and an unlikely camaraderie develops between them. Filled with nostalgic tales harking back to the war era where the youth escaped the harshness of the landscape with music, parties and romance. A lovely read. ( )

When 19 year old Ruby decides that she has had enough of her life in London, she runs away to her grandmother Iris's home in Cairo. As Ruby falls in love with Cairo, Iris is in ill health and fears that she is losing her memories of wartime Cairo and the soldier she fell in love with, who lost his life in World War II. As we learn the story of Iris and Xan Molyneaux, we also see Ruby growing up, forming a relationship of her own and bonding with her grandmother.

I really enjoyed this book. As well as being a retrospective love story (which is wonderfully told), it is also a story of Ruby's own journey from a troubled and thoughtless teenager, to an intelligent and compassionate young woman. The story deals with love and heartbreak, fear and memory, and in particular, how the memory of one certain time in life, can affect all the times that come after it.

Cairo is vividly brought to life - both in the modern day and during World War II - and it was very easy to imagine how Ruby felt discovering the city for the first time. Reading the book made me want to visit there myself.

Although the love story between Iris and Xan is passionate and beautifully told, it is never cheesy or overly sentimental.

All of the characters were entirely believable - more so for not being perfect - and the writing is fantastic. I am determined to seek out more by this author. ( )

The story builds on the relationship beween Grandmother (a Cairo resident) and her teenage Granddaughter a runaway from England. But Rosie Thomas also captures modern-day Cairo very well - the crazy traffic with the black and white cabs, the City of the Dead, the surrounding desert etc. We learn too, through the Grandmother's story as she recalls her youthful romance, what Cairo might have been like during WWII. ( )