However I found these two elements in amongst beautiful descriptions of village teas, annual outings to the seaside and a countryside in full bloom to be shocking. I haven’t read too deeply around Cider with Rosie so apologies if this is old news and has been discussed many a time before. There is also reference in another chapter to a man being murdered and the village hushing it up. They go as far as accosting the girl but luckily don’t carry through with their plan. In the chapter Lee describes how him and some friends hatch a plan to meet up and basically rape a girl in the woods. So I can’t review Cider with Rosie without mentioning the chapter entitled ‘First Bite at the Apple’. “Slivers of raw pastry, moulded, warm, went down in the shapes of men and women – heads and arms of unsalted flesh seasoned with nothing but a dream of cannibalism.” Aged well? All of it was told in Lee’s sublime style of writing and nestled amongst beautiful descriptions of nature, wildlife and food. There was humour, I can just imagine his mother running late for the bus, and sadness in an age when young children were susceptible to illness and even death. The book documents the various stages of Lee’s childhood with fabulous little insights into a way of life now lost, I loved the cocoa tins stuffed with smouldering rags to keep hands warm and the finding of various bits of string/nails/mice in the family’s daily bread. Lee lived a fascinating life (check out the follow up to Cider with Rosie – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning) but it is Cider with Rosie that people most associate him with. “My life began on the carrier’s cart which brought me up the long slow hills to the village.” A life now lost However Cider with Rosie is much more linear in fashion and starts from the day Lee moves in to his house in a remote Cotswold village. At first glance it is quite similar to A Village Christmas being autobiographical in style. A Village Christmas makes reference to Cider with Rosie and as a result I purchased a copy when I spotted it in my local charity shop.
I had read the beautiful A Village Christmas last (last) year and loved Lee’s style of writing. 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. Who fancies Cider with Rosie? We do! Cider with Rosie – the blurbĬider 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.
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