Cider With Rosie, by Laurie Lee, is a memoir that captures beautifully a time and place. Laurie Lee was a poet, and this memoir (the first of a trilogy of memoirs) was poetic and lyrical and beautiful to read. I also had the pleasure of listening to the audiobook of Laurie Lee himself reading this first volume. For me, it was a very moving experience. His old voice was filled with emotion and nostalgia. As he read, I thought of my grandparents and of my father … the stories Laurie Lee told were familiar and in some ways similar to stories my elders told me as I was growing up. My father, too, grew up in a small village in a small valley. He, too, told stories filled with nostalgia, and his descriptions of the valley and the stories of his childhood became part of me. So I loved this little book and look forward to reading the next two memoirs.

Below are two samples of his storytelling, and examples of why I loved this book.

A brief snippet from one chapter that told wonderful stories about two old ladies in the village, their lives and deaths completely intertwined…

“Me dad planted that tree,’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window.
The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house.
Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill’s dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny’s age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world.”

A description of his mother’s garden…

“Our terraced strip of garden was Mother’s monument, and she worked it headstrong, without plan. She would never control or clear this ground, merely cherish whatever was there; and she was as impartial in her encouragement to all that grew as a spell of sweet sunny weather. She would force nothing, graft nothing, nor set things in rows; she welcomed self-seeders, let each have its head, and was the enemy of very few weeds. Consequently our garden was a sprouting jungle and never an inch was wasted.”

I read this book as one of my 50-books-in-5-years for The Classics Club. It was also on my list for my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge. And I chose this book to read for my personal challenge, “Wanderlust“– to read books from each country of the world. This was a classic from United Kingdom.