Ibrahim & Reenie

by David Llewellyn

Ibrahim is a young Muslim guy walking from Cardiff to London. He has his own reasons, and his own mental and physical struggles to deal with along the way. What he hadn’t counted on was a chance meeting with 75-year-old East Londoner Reenie before he’s hardly started. With her life’s luggage in a shopping trolley, complete with an orange tent and her pet cockatiel, Reenie is also walking the M4, and not for charity. As they share a journey their paths stretch out before and behind them into the personal and political turns of European history in ways neither could have foreseen.

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 15, 2013

About the author

David Llewellyn is a Welsh novelist and script writer. He grew up in Pontypool and graduated from Dartington College of Arts in 2000. His first novel, Eleven, was published by Seren Press in 2006. His second, Trace Memory, a spin-off from the BBC drama series Torchwood, was published in March 2008. Everything Is Sinister was published by Seren in May 2008. He has written two novels for the Doctor Who New Series Adventures: The Taking of Chelsea 426, featuring the Tenth Doctor, and Night of the Humans, featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.

In addition to writing novels, Llewellyn wrote the Bernice Summerfield audio play Paradise Frost and the Dark Shadows audio drama The Last Stop for Big Finish Productions.

Llewellyn lives in Cardiff.

Reviews

[Catsalive · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1...

An interesting read. So little happens, & yet so much. Both Ibrahim & Reenie underwent metaphorical journeys through the past to the present, along with their physical trek from Cardiff to London. Unusual in that they spent so much time together & yet didn't share much about themselves, not even the reasons for their lengthy stroll. Certainly a case of cosmic co-incidence between these two.

[Dawn F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reenie, an elderly woman, is walking to London from Cardiff with her belongings in a trolley. Ibrahim is also walking to London from Cardiff, and the two decide to keep each other company. A wonderful, unsentimental story about two very different people who meet by chance, but whose lives seem to be interlinked with each other's in ways they could not have imagined.

[Stuart Bain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book and could really identify with the characters.

[penelopewanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who knows why we pick up the books we do? At some point I worked regularly at a European Institution which had a small lending library for staff tucked away - I used to love just taking a book because the cover appealed to me, or because the name of the author was familiar. So too, bookcrossing makes it possible to sign up for books to arrive through the post (the rings and rays) - and often I sign up for books because the title appeals to me or simply on a whim. Yes, I do usually read the few comments and sometimes even look up the reviews on a site like amazon, but I try not to read too much ahead of time. This was one such book, signed up for almost on a whim.
The crossing of two lives, so different and yet so unexpectedly linked was very moving, I found. Just as when two trains are in the station at the same time, and strangers' gazes meet before the trains take off again in different directions, so too does the encounter between Reenie and Ibrahim end. Have they, and especially Ibrahim, been changed by this meeting? They share some, but actually quite little of their lives, but this journey allows them to reflect. Sad, but the writing carries the reader along on this path.