CIDER WITH ROSIE
Ratings9
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings9
Average rating3.7
Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity and 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.
'It sings in the memory' Sunday Times
Laurie Lee's matchless memories of his childhood, told in glittering prose and with a wonderfully wicked sense of comedy, have made Cider with Rosie one of the most famous of all autobiographies. One of eight children, Laurie Lee was born in 1914, in Slad, Gloucestershire, then a remote corner of England. As his father was absent, the large family -- five children from his father's first marriage and three from his second one -- was brought up by his capable mother. "We lived where he had left us; a relic of his provincial youth; a sprawling cumbersome, countrified brood too incongruous to carry with him; and I, for one, scarcely missed him. I was perfectly content in this world of women . . . bullied and tumbled through the hand-to-mouth days, patched or dressed-up, scolded, admired, swept off my feet in sudden passions of kisses, or dumped forgotten among the unwashed pots." Lee's memoir opens when he was just a baby younger than three years old and ends as he becomes a young man experiencing his first kiss. "I turned to look at Rosie. She was yellow and dusty with buttercups and seemed to be purring in the gloom; her hair was rich as a wild bee's nest and her eyes were full of stings. I did not know what to do about her, nor did I know what not to do. She looked smooth and precious, a thing of unplumbable mysteries, and perilous as quicksand." This beloved classic describes a lost world, a world reflecting the innocence and wonder of childhood, and illuminating an era without electricity or telephones. This is England on the cusp of the modern era, but it could have been anywhere. This may explain why Cider with Rosie became an instant bestseller when it was published in 1959, selling over six million copies in the UK alone, and continues to be read by children and adults all over the world. - Amazon (from The Midwest Book Review)
Reviews with the most likes.
Laurie Lee grew up in a rural part of England during the
time just after the Great War. His father abandoned his mother with
eight children to raise. Lee was almost always hungry and cold. But
life never seemed hard; somehow it seemed joyous and delightful.
I was especially taken with the chapter about the devilments children
and young people got into during Lee's time. Back in Lee's day, as
today, terrible things happened. But somehow the village and its
people just seemed to deal with them, not making them into events of
enormous evil as we seem to do today.
I loved reading about the day to day living of Lee during his
childhood. Everything seemed so much more alive then, with things to
taste and touch and smell. Lee revels in his life. The stories he
tells makes the time seem glorious.
Featured Series
3 primary booksThe Autobiographical Trilogy is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1959 with contributions by Laurie Lee, Pirkko Saisio, and Mia Spangenberg.
