Cider with Rosie

By Laurie Lee,

Book cover of Cider with Rosie

Book description

A re-issue of the evocative and nostalgic account of Lee's country childhood in a secluded Cotswold valley. Lee describes a vanished rural world of village schools and church outings but also touches on the darker side of village life as it comes into contact with murder, rape, suicide and depression.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

3 authors picked Cider with Rosie as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In my book I talk about how many people miss out on the love they expect—the love of a mother, father, spouse, or child—and yet how most of us survive by finding the love we need elsewhere. In Cider with Rosie, Laurie’s father abandons his family, but Laurie’s mother shines: her frisks and gaieties, her fits of screams, her love of man. This is the childhood memoir of one of the great (somewhat unacknowledged) poets of the twentieth century.

From Richard's list on weird families and how to survive them.

In stark contrast to the gloom of depression-era Limerick, Cider with Rosie is a paean to the idyllic lost world of rural England at approximately the same time. Lee was a poet and his prose sings as he describes his family, “a sprawling, cumbersome, countrified brood” and the old people of the village, “…white-whiskered, gaitered, booted and bonneted, ancient-tongued last of their world.” Growing up in the west of Scotland, I knew nothing of Lee’s world and lived a young city life radically different from his, and yet his writing and imagery drew me so far in that I missed…

From John's list on memoirs of lost childhood.

“I belong to that generation which saw, by chance, the end of a thousand years’ life… Myself, my family, my generation were born in a world of silence; a world of hard work and necessary patience…”

Reflecting on his childhood experiences in rural Gloucestershire in the years immediately after the First World War, Laurie Lee provides an elegiac account of a way of life which was soon to be swept away by the coming of electricity, second home-owners, tarmac roads, and the bric-a-brac of the modern world. It is a great, poetic love story too. When I read it…

If you love Cider with Rosie...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like Cider with Rosie?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Cider with Rosie.

Browse books like Cider with Rosie

Book cover of Angela's Ashes
Book cover of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Book cover of Rural Rides

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,588

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like Cider with Rosie, you might also like...

Book cover of A Last Survivor of the Orphan Trains: A Memoir

A Last Survivor of the Orphan Trains By Victoria Golden, William Walters,

Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.

For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast…

Book cover of Brother. Do. You. Love. Me.

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. By Manni Coe, Reuben Coe (illustrator),

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. is a true story of brotherly love overcoming all. Reuben, who has Down's syndrome, was trapped in a care home during the pandemic, spiralling deeper into a non-verbal depression. From isolation and in desperation, he sent his older brother Manni a text, "brother. do. you.…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Great Depression, childhood, and presidential biography?

Childhood 200 books