Cider with Rosie: A Memoir (The Autobiographical Trilogy Book 1)

When I opened the email last month, it was clear I’d missed out. According to Amazon’s Daily Deal blurb Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie was “an instant classic when it was first published in 1959 [and] one of the most endearing and evocative portraits of youth in all of literature”. Now because I worked for several years in a book store, I’m at Cider With Rosieleast familiar with many more titles and authors than I’ve read. So one would think I’d at least heard of this Laurie Lee who “learned to look at life with a painter’s eye and a poet’s heart—qualities of vision that, decades later, would make him one of England’s most cherished authors”.Of course, I had to remedy this oversight, so one-click order I did and was soon settled into a memoir of one of England’s beloved sons I hadn’t even known existed. But after the first chapter, I admit I didn’t know if it was love or hate.Three-year-old Laurie sits on the floor of his new home amidst the chaos of moving a family of seven into a new cottage in the village of Slad. Little Laurie was surrounded by “glass fishes, china dogs, shepherds and shepherdesses, bronze horsemen, stopped clocks, barometers, and photographs of bearded men”. His sisters and mother bustle in and out of the house; his brothers help unload the handcart. Lee’s prose was over-rich, I thought—awash in adjectives and adverbs; drowning in lists. I almost put the memoir aside.But after another chapter, Lee grew on me. His rich narrative seemed to mirror the lush countryside and the hub-bub that was his home. I settled into those lists and that descriptive prose. Like this: “That kitchen, worn by our boots and lives, was scruffy, warm, and low, whose fuss of furniture seemed never the same but was shuffled each day” and this: “These were the … rocks of our submarine life, each object worn smooth by our constant nuzzling, or encrusted by lively barnacles, relics of birthdays and dead relations, wrecks of furniture long since foundered …” It’s definitely not my style and not what I’d usually choose, but I’m happy I did.Cider With Rosie let me peek into a world that no longer exists—grannies who lived as neighbors for decades, yetRosebank Cottage, SladRosebank Cottage, Sladnever spoke; sisters who decorated their hats with bits and bobs; a picnic caravanned to a just perfect spot in the woods; a school teacher quick to smack boys upside the head; sleeping five to a room in quilt-deep beds; a bottle of shared cider and a stolen kiss under a field wagon.Lee went on to write two more memoirs of his life and a few books of poetry. I was able to find a wonderful interview with Lee on the BBC—his recollections follow the book closely—which makes a great companion listen.Cider With Rosie should probably be read when the time is just right, like a hazy summer afternoon or a blustery winter night … or anytime, really, when the edges of the world outside become blurred and you could oh-so-easily fade into the English countryside.[read more at thisismysymphony.net]

This is Laurie Lee’s love letter to the Cotswolds’ and his impoverished though rich childhood - a memoir filled with one memorable vignette after another. The trials and tribulations, the larks and adventures are all brought vividly to life by Lee, whose writing style is extravagantly evocative and assured. One feels transported, a voyeur or witness to a bygone place and era. I read with a smile and laughed several times – especially when mother would hold up the bus while she rinsed out her scarf or looked for her shoes [there is someone in my life very much like this]. I was often moved by the poignant depiction of melancholy events, never more so than by the death of his sister. Here is an excerpt:“It was soon after this that my sister Frances died. She was a beautiful, fragile, dark-curled child, and my Morher’s only daughter. Though only four, she used to watch me like a nurse, sitting all day beside my cot and talking softly in a special language. Nobody noticed that she was dying herself, they were too much concerned with me. She died suddenly, silently, without complaint, in a chair in the corner of the room. An ignorant death which need never have happened – and I believe that she gave me her life.”I loved the scenes at the village school. The country festivals. The story of all his uncles. Cider with Rosie under the wagon. Most of all I hated the father and wanted terrible things to happen to him for abandoning his family, and yet the mother’s reaction to his death and the horrible realization that her fantasies that he'd return and they’d spend their final days together were finally and forever torn asunder…well, I just wanted to fold her up in my arms and let her mourn all her dashed dreams.I’ve read a number of very fine books this year, and this is one of the best.

I had no idea what or why I was reading this book. It started slow but I began to like the story. I could relate to the author's living. I grew up very poor in the backwoods of North central New York state. I could sense the dusty crowded kitchen huddled around the stove to keep warm. I could feel the snow drifts on my bare knees. The author's sense of loneliness and isolation from the world in the outback country where he lived . The story was of happy times of mother and her 3 sons and 3 daughters raised without their absent father. Picnics, Church celebrations, Christmas caroling and the town Squire. I loved the language of the early 20th century England country folks.

I read this wonderful book on my Kindle, but was very unpleasantly surprised and disappointed when the book ended at 80%. A couple of the reviews mentioned passages that weren't in my Kindle version I guess I am going to have to get the hard copy to see what I missed. Or, perhaps I am the one who didn't download the update for this book--if there is one.I am not usually one who notices how words are put together when I read a book. However, in Cider with Rosie I couldn't help but feel how the most perfect words and phrases were chosen for almost every paragraph. Scenes were created in my mind that made me almost feel I was there about 100 years ago. My heart broke for Laurie Lee's mother who never doubted her husband would come back to her--until she heard he was dead.How wonderful there are more books in this series. I have them all on my Kindle, but am not sure about reading further Lee books on that device.

This book was a visit to a turn of the century (19th to 20th) childhood and English village life. Delightfully written and very evocative of the age and feelings. I can understand why it is been in print for half a century and enjoyed it greatly. Highly recommended for those who want to get a true feel for the age.

I read this when I was a young man and seem to recall enjoying it. This time, after working for many years as a journalist, I managed just a few pages before developing virtually an allergy to the self-important verbosity that afflicts so much ‘poetic’ writing. Bluntly, the words - a bottomless pit of metaphors and similes - get in the way. This highly regarded novel is, perhaps, good of its kind - in the way that classical music is ‘good’: but if you don’t enjoy it, you’re just subjecting yourself to an individual’s indulgence. The reader needs to see what the writer is describing: here, Lee’s technique blinds you and drives you away.

Good in parts, but I'm at a loss how this disjointed work became such a classic. There is some good descriptive writing in this memoir of childhood and an age long past, and this makes for a relaxing light read. However the chapters just didn't weld together for me and for that reason I simply did not enjoy the style of writing. Having heard many tales from my own parents of similar vintage to the author, I found many of the tales very believable, but definitely not all of them, and I can't help feel that Lee used much licence, although quite accept that in itself does not spoil the tales. The memoir is certainly not all sun and cider as there are tales of violence, murder, incest, thoughts of rape, sickness and death, so in that sense typical of village life even today. The difference is that today the police and social services would have a field day attempting to sort it out rather than it being kept within the village community, and readers can debate as to whether or not that is positive progress. This book was not for me, and as I have When I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning on order, I can only hope for better to come.

A meander through the Cotswalds.....This book is quite a gentle read that had me meandering through the Cotswalds and the Gloustershire countryside. The story had a lot of lovely descriptions and metaphors that helped bring the landscape and the authors memories to life.The book is told from the perspective of the author, Laurie Lee, and brings a great sense of nostalgia to a time gone by. The writing is rather poetic, although in parts it feels it had been written by him when a little younger.The book is also not written in chronological order, which made me loose track a bit as it jumps around from one year or one event to the next. Additionally, I found some of the chapters were better than others. On another note, I really liked the book cover.Overall this was a gentle read which had me travelling to the Costwalds through the pages.

A book to read simply for the joy of the English language! Laurie Lee’s prose is poetic and deeply moving. His pen manages to lend a surreal beauty to everything – including poverty and cruelty – I was mesmerised. Set in 1920’s rural England just after the first world war, this memoir documents the rich, idyllic Cotswold landscape as seen through the eyes of young Laurie Lee, and not simply in physical terms but emotional ones, too.It’s a kaleidoscope of village life; the changing seasons, his family, the fascination and acceptance of death, and the close, always powerful proximity of nature. It even had me think about my grandparents and wonder at the relationship ties and those of love which bind us and remain the same throughout generations, regardless of circumstance and time. How the perception of events we remember from childhood depends on a multitude of factors, but are instantly recognisable in others. Lush prose and full of character, Cider with Rosie is an intense, vivid glimpse into a slice of timeless village life. Sometimes funny, insightful, or sad, but never seen through rose-tinted spectacles or dressed in sentimentality.

Cider with Rosie is vivid memoir of childhood in the first half of the twentieth century, encompassing that period just before and around the First World War when huge change and upheaval took place in society. Laurie Lee offers us his intimate sharing of the people, events and places he knew. The images he shares will stay with the reader long after putting the book down. I was particularly taken by his dream of being a King in charge of an army of grannies. These were proper grannies in long black dresses with tight white buns hidden under white bonnets, button boots, umbrellas, gossip and petty rivalries and glasses perched on the end of their noses - Giles Grannies in fact – this is just one of the pictures I took away. A less pleasant image was that of the boys holding birds under water then throwing them up into the air, reminding us of the vicious nature of little boys. The account is always brutally honest.At times this book is an orgy of lyrical and poetic description almost reminiscent of Dylan Thomas, at others he offers a matter of fact discourse complete with the vernacular and dialect of the day. He tells of the poverty of life offset by a richness of village experience dating back thousands of years; a time of innocence and unbridled mischief for the children who ran wild and were sometimes so cruel. It is a personal account of a time long before mass communication and easy travel when people made their own entertainment and expectations were lower; and lastly, it was a time of nostalgia. School comprehension exercises put me off this book early on but I am so pleased to have rediscovered it in middle age.