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Overview
One of eight children, Laurie Lee was born in 1914 in Slad, Gloucestershire, in what was then a remote corner of the Cotswold Valley. The large family was miraculously brought up by a single mother, and as the second youngest brother surrounded by doting sisters, Lee experienced life with a raw intensity and innocence that is magically conveyed in a lush, expressive prose that provides the child's side of the journey into adulthood.
Cider With Rosie opens with Lee as a baby, and it closes with him experiencing his first kiss. In the interim, he takes in the cadence of village and family life while suffering all the agonies and awkwardness of adolescence. This beautiful memoir narrates this sense of both his lost youth, and the passage from innocence to experience with a lyricism that is poignant and powerful. This book (first published in 1959) is now an acclaimed and beloved classic, selling more than six million copies worldwide.
Synopsis
One of eight children, Laurie Lee was born in 1914, in Slad, Gloucestershire, then a remote corner of England. As his father was absent, the large family—five children from his father's first marriage and three from his second one—was brought up by his capable mother. "We lived where he had left us; a relic of his provincial youth; a sprawling cumbersome, countrified brood too incongruous to carry with him; and I, for one, scarcely missed him. I was perfectly content in this world of women . . . bullied and tumbled through the hand-to-mouth days, patched or dressed-up, scolded, admired, swept off my feet in sudden passions of kisses, or dumped forgotten among the unwashed pots."