Inventory of a Life Mislaid: An Unreliable Memoir

Hugely enjoyable & fascinating with wonderful diversions - I especially enjoyed the one on brogues. Remarkably evocative of a time & era that in some ways has vanished so long ago & in some ways is perhaps still with us. Highly recommend

A fascinating account of life in Egypt before the Suez crisis and of British colonial attitudes. I would have liked to know more about her later childhood and found some of the digressions too long.

She has such a way with words

It is difficult for me to be objective about this wonderful read. Marina Warner is only a month younger than I am and her story of her early life in Cairo could be my autobiography. We might well have been removed from the same convent school to attend a school in someone's flat. My mother never quite got over having to cut off my first curls because I developed prickly heat on my neck so when I got head live from the Arab girl who slept on my bedroom floor I was bent over the bath and had my hair washed in parafin. We too were members of the Gaziera Country Club where I learnt to swim before I could walk and made many friends while our mothers chatted on the terrace in the shade.. My mother and two brothers were all born in the Anglo American Hospital next to the club. My parents met and married in Cairo in 1945. We lived in Zamalek and my maternal grandparents lived in Heliopolis.Marina Warner's style of writing is unusual and at times I found her narrative a little difficult to follow. I had opted to down load the audiobook so perhaps it would have been better to read it . I have since sent a copy to my son in Los Angeles and one of my brother's in Essex.