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Cider with Rosie (Vintage classics) by: Laurie Lee

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Rating: - This is interesting, even if a little tedeus......

This is a really interesting autobiographical text, but only for the first few storys/chapters. Because after a while, just reading the same style of writing and similar accounts, right the way through the book, it can get a little bit tedeus. Instead, it's the kind of book that I'd read for a week or so, then leave it for a while, and then go back to it refreshed. Another reason it hasn't got more three stars is that I like a book that keeps me interested and gripped, but, Cider With Rosie dosen't do this. However, that is probably because it's not of that genre.

Overall, I think this is worth a read, and for me personally, it's something different to what I would normally read.

Rating: - Should be read by all who have a feeling for the countryside

I have just re-read this after an interval of 25 years when it was first published, and it is as fresh as ever. Beautiful descriptive prose of English countryside - the countryside that my mother knew in the early 1900s. Wonderful characters, particularly the writer's mother. Fascinating to read in such detail the childhood of one of the 20th century's best writers.

Rating: - A Gentle Poetic Novel - perfect for a wet Sunday afternoon

Lee's prose is extremely evocative of a time now lost to us. Very much like Thomas Hardy but without the misery! Long, sweeping, descriptive passages of a child's life in the country at the turn of the century. His characterisation is beautiful - sometimes poignant, often amusing. It is only a short book, but not to be rushed. You need to savour every part of it. Thoroughly enjoyable in a peaceful, gentle way.

Rating: - Precious reminder of the 'real' world...

In the age of central heating and flourescent light it's nigh-on impossible to imagine living in a world absolutely dominated by the time of day or the seasons. All progress could be described as a mixed blessing, and I would argue that what we've gained in material comfort we've also lost in savouring and surviving the natural world's variables. Laurie Lee, by necessity, grew up close to nature, and Cider With Rosie is a valuable (and beautiful) document to a not too distant past. I've read it with increasing pleasure and recognition a number of times since being 'force-fed' the book one hot summer at school.

Rating: - The end of a thousand years of rural life

"Never to be forgotten, that first long secret drink of golden fire, juice of those valleys and of that time, wine of wild orchards, of russet summer, of plump red apples, and Rosie's burning cheeks. Never to be forgotten, or ever tasted again...."

I challenge any reader not be moved by the poetry and the passion of the prose in this work. Truly a classic of the twentieth century.

Deeply evocative, one can almost feel the weight of a thousand years of history, slowly disappearing while the young Laurie Lee grows up, in a chaotic house with his memorable mother and the brothers and sisters from his father's first marriage as well as the second (the father himself having left for London). We see the full, glorious spectrum of village life, almost pagan in the way everything is bound up in the seasons and the rhythms of the earth.

A book to read and read again.

"I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began."

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