Product Description

"Cider with Rosie" is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16859 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
`Lee describes the rhythms of village life...so every smell and sensation of his Gloucestershire childhood comes alive'
--Daily Express

Review
one of Susan Hampshire's `Six Best Books': `utterly charming'

Review
'5 Best'

Customer Reviews

A classic memoir
Although Laurie Lee preferred to write poetry, he is best known for his prose: the trilogy of memoirs he wrote late in his life. "Cider with Rosie" is the first, detailing his childhood from the time he moves into his Gloucestershire home to just before he leaves to seek his fortune. His prose is extremely lyrical, especially when describing nature, his beloved mother and his three older half-sisters. Apart from the quality of the writing, "Cider with Rosie" should be read for the poetic descriptions of an England with few motorcars "where the horse was still king", agricultural communities that were able to function independently and hardly any interference from "the outside world".

Long ago and far away
"They said: `You're Laurie Lee, aren't you? Well just you sit there for the present.' I sat there all day but I never got it. I ain't going back there again." This is Laurie Lee's unforgettable description of his first day at school.

I have a special affection for this book, as my mother grew up in the Stroud area and was only two years younger than Laurie. Even if they didn't actually know each other, it is very likely that they met.

The story manages to be both lyrical and realistic. One minute it presents a childhood idyll, next you are faced with death - sometimes sad, sometimes brutal.

The core of the story is the life of Laurie's large and boisterous family, living in cheerful poverty in their Cotswold cottage, and above all his mercurial, warm-hearted mother (his father plays only a bit-part in events). "She was an artist, a light-giver, and an original, and she never for a moment knew it."

It is a common tendency to look back on the period of one's youth as a turning point in history, but when you read the last chapter you will understand Laurie's claim "The village had a few years left, the last of its thousand, and they passed almost without our knowing".

Rosie really did exist. Indeed, she outlived Laurie, and only three years ago she was interviewed by BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

There have been two excellent TV adaptations of the story. Unfortunately neither is currently available on DVD. (Correction August 2008 - the more recent version starring Juliet Stevenson is now available.)

The book is as golden as the cider of the title - read it and delight.

Eloquent
This is a wonderfully told memoir of Lee's childhood in the remote Cotswold village of Stroud. He tells of how he grew up being raised in a one-parent family, his father having left them when he was just 3 years old. His mother believed for all of her life that one day her husband would return home to them, but sadly he never did. He used to send them a few pounds to support the home each week but Lee's life was one of poverty and hardship, yet he still took delight in many of the simple things in life. Lee's style of writing is beautifully descriptive and depicts a world before technology such as mobile phones and computers were even imagined. Sometimes funny, often sad, but extremely eloquently told, in this book Laurie Lee brings the distant past back to life and I highly recommend it.