'A tropic heat oozed up from the ground, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. He sees grass 'knife-edged, dark and wicked green'. The young Laurie Lee doesn't see soft Mother Nature. And horror.Įven the famous opening speaks of 'bewilderment and terror'. I'd forgotten that the light in the book glows so brightly, the life seems so dazzling, because Lee is such a master of contrast. My memories of Cider With Rosie may not have been wrong – but they were far from the full story. And that goes a long way, I think, to explaining why this book is so often recalled as bursting with joy and sap and life.īut, of course, it isn't all like that. It's a tiny touch – but the cumulative effect of these flourishes is one of energy, verve, life and sheer delight in language.

Take the following: 'It was a frost-bright, moon-cold night of winter … ' Why swap those words around? There's no rational reason, but the result is strangely magical, jumping from the page, emphasising the moonlight and the cold, sounding lovely. Even the most casual-seeming sentences have their own trill of joy. It's beautiful from the extended descriptions of the Slad valley, right down to the individual words on the page. I still agree with Nicolson, everyone else, and, reassuringly, myself.

Meanwhile, towards the beginning of his introduction to the new Vintage edition of the book, Michael Morpurgo writes: 'I remember being mesmerised by the beauty of the prose – a prose poem, a narrative poem, I thought, a word painting.' Writing in the Observer back in 1959, Harold Nicolson said of the book: 'Its vigour and delicacy animate the loveliness of existence.'Ĭlearly, this is a valid view of Cider With Rosie. Plenty of contributors to the Reading group would have agreed with me too, judging by comments like the following: 'It's a truly beautiful book', 'Its beauty, humour and humanity leave me speechless and uplifted each time I read it. But beyond that, I'd have been sure that this was a book of spring ripening into summer, of blooming life and golden light. I'd perhaps have had an uncomfortable recollection of a midnight murder by a crossroads, and another of a suicide in a millpond. I'd have laughed about funny local characters like Gran Trill and her lifelong, long-life rivalry with Granny Wallon. I'd have spoken about fun trips on charabancs, youthful energy, fecund nature and sexual awakening. If you'd asked me two weeks ago what this book was about, I'd have confidently told you that it's a happy, nostaligic, idealistic evocation of a lost time and place. Memory, as the gloriously unreliable narrator of Cider With Rosie probably wouldn't admit, is a strange, distorting thing.

A cider with rosie