Be transported through time and space!
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I love this book. Our headmaster often used to read passages from it in morning assemley decades ago, and it stayed with me since then. The language is beautifully eloquent, and the author gives us a wonderfully realistic look into country life all that time ago. I especially loved the chapter about his mother, describing her with such honesty but love too, that I felt I'd known her myself. This weekend read was better than a weekend break in the country !
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Eloquent
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This is a wonderfully told memoir of Lee's childhood in the remote Cotswold village of Stroud. He tells of how he grew up being raised in a one-parent family, his father having left them when he was just 3 years old. His mother believed for all of her life that one day her husband would return home to them, but sadly he never did. He used to send them a few pounds to support the home each week but Lee's life was one of poverty and hardship, yet he still took delight in many of the simple things in life. Lee's style of writing is beautifully descriptive and depicts a world before technology such as mobile phones and computers were even imagined. Sometimes funny, often sad, but extremely eloquently told, in this book Laurie Lee brings the distant past back to life and I highly recommend it.
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A sort of cross between a novel and a biographical prose poem
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This very richly written descriptive of a childhood so fondly remembered is a piece of pure writing, straight from the heart, and rightly stands as a classic. It is of course a thing of a type, and this type of work helps to show how hugely wide the category of 'novel' writing is. This is a work straddling the far border of fiction and factual based biography but written for the enjoyment of description and depiction by a lover of language. It's worth a read by anyone whatever they're tastes, but I expect not too many thriller readers will be drawn to reading it. I liked it because it's clearly written by a lover of both life and language, but did find it a very rich cake. I can actually see why some would dislike it as a novel. Those who pick up a novel wanting to be told a story, rather than simply be taken to another world, may well feel cheated by it. It is without doubt though beautifully written.
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Brilliant
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I love this book esp the illustrated version, the writing is so rich and conjures up vivid images that jump straight off the page. read it in school and enjoyed it read it again as an adult and still enjoyed it. I would read it again, which is very unusual for me. Classic
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Long ago and far away
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"They said: `You're Laurie Lee, aren't you? Well just you sit there for the present.' I sat there all day but I never got it. I ain't going back there again." This is Laurie Lee's unforgettable description of his first day at school.
I have a special affection for this book, as my mother grew up in the Stroud area and was only two years younger than Laurie. Even if they didn't actually know each other, it is very likely that they met.
The story manages to be both lyrical and realistic. One minute it presents a childhood idyll, next you are faced with death - sometimes sad, sometimes brutal.
The core of the story is the life of Laurie's large and boisterous family, living in cheerful poverty in their Cotswold cottage, and above all his mercurial, warm-hearted mother (his father plays only a bit-part in events). "She was an artist, a light-giver, and an original, and she never for a moment knew it."
It is a common tendency to look back on the period of one's youth as a turning point in history, but when you read the last chapter you will understand Laurie's claim "The village had a few years left, the last of its thousand, and they passed almost without our knowing".
Rosie really did exist. Indeed, she outlived Laurie, and only three years ago she was interviewed by BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
There have been two excellent TV adaptations of the story. Unfortunately neither is currently available on DVD. (Correction August 2008 - the more recent version starring Juliet Stevenson is now available.)
The book is as golden as the cider of the title - read it and delight.
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