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readingoverbreathing's review
4.0
"The mystery of what sinks in in infancy and what flows by is profound: a child a baffling mixture of receptivity and inattention. Waves of words, breaking continually over the impressionable sand, leave weed and stick and broken glass and echoing shell, and sweep as much away. Another tide takes some, brings more; how much unaccountably sinks down to become part of the permanent structure of the shore?"
I picked this out at the Slightly Foxed office at the end of my internship with them last summer mainly because I found this paperbacks series so pretty, and the name Napier seemed vaguely familiar to me. Months later, I'm still not sure where I'd previously heard it, but I am glad that it led me to this little gem.
Priscilla Napier writes so vividly of her childhood in the most exquisite and detailed language; her memory and her reflection upon memory are equally profound throughout this text. I love how well she interwove contemporary Egyptian, British, and global politics into this narrative, tying her childhood impressions in with the reality she has since grown to understand.
I will admit that this dragged in some places, but really it was overall a great work of writing if nothing else, and certainly a profound historical text in its own right. This is the kind of memoir I'd like to find more of in the future.
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