Into Suez by Stevie Davies (2010)
Read: November 2011
This was recommended by the Grauniad when it came out and it sounded good and quite up my street so I asked for it when it came out. After reading Map of Love, with its jumping timeline narratives I really didn't want another "look at the present and understand the past" type book. I opened this up and it was just that - eekk! But after the firts chapter I was turned round and was hooked. I finished within the week that I was in Dahab and am really pleased that I managed to get a copy of this.
Something about this story made it so more readable that the last book. It just didn't compare. The two time periods are first when the husband is stationed in Cairo and the wife and young daughter come out to join him. At this time the wife meets and befriends another military wife. The second part of the tale is the adult daughter now revisiting Egypt for the first time with her own daughter. She is trying to find out more about her mother and father and so she meets her mothers friend. The stories tied in well, as the mother gets to know her new friend in Egypt, so does her daughter now get to know the friend, and through that her mother, in the present day. The awkwardness returns in the present between the daughter and her mother's friend, as it did in the past when the truth about her mother's relationship with her came out and her mother and father's relationship broke down.
There are definite sad moments in this book and I emphasised with both the wife and her husband in their tale. It did the period justice and the descriptions of Ish (Ismalia) and the tour and time there reflected well.
A really good book - so glad that I got it and that I finally got round to reading it!
Read: November 2011
This was recommended by the Grauniad when it came out and it sounded good and quite up my street so I asked for it when it came out. After reading Map of Love, with its jumping timeline narratives I really didn't want another "look at the present and understand the past" type book. I opened this up and it was just that - eekk! But after the firts chapter I was turned round and was hooked. I finished within the week that I was in Dahab and am really pleased that I managed to get a copy of this.
Something about this story made it so more readable that the last book. It just didn't compare. The two time periods are first when the husband is stationed in Cairo and the wife and young daughter come out to join him. At this time the wife meets and befriends another military wife. The second part of the tale is the adult daughter now revisiting Egypt for the first time with her own daughter. She is trying to find out more about her mother and father and so she meets her mothers friend. The stories tied in well, as the mother gets to know her new friend in Egypt, so does her daughter now get to know the friend, and through that her mother, in the present day. The awkwardness returns in the present between the daughter and her mother's friend, as it did in the past when the truth about her mother's relationship with her came out and her mother and father's relationship broke down.
There are definite sad moments in this book and I emphasised with both the wife and her husband in their tale. It did the period justice and the descriptions of Ish (Ismalia) and the tour and time there reflected well.
A really good book - so glad that I got it and that I finally got round to reading it!
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