Book info

• Title Cider With Rosie
• Author Laurie Lee
• Year 1959
• Genres Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography

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.

Review

I think this is a book that we read in school, but if that is the case, I don’t remember very much about it. I had a vague feeling it was a difficult read but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I loved the way it started with just a small boy being dumped in some long grass, and gradually his world expanded more and more until you get to the end where there’s a whole adult life still to be explored.

The people within the book are fascinating, Lee’s extended family, the grandmother’s that live in the same building, the friends, the bullies, the boyfriends of the sisters… all fascinating.This is all brought along by the excellent prose, descriptive and suffocating in its detail.

I really enjoyed it which came as a surprise to me but I’m glad I gave it another chance.

Rating: 4 / 5