Laurie Lee's book is rightly celebrated for its warm, fond retrospection. But it's not short of death and darkness either
Dark and light … Laurie Lee plays the violin at home in Slad, Gloucestershire in 1977. Photograph: Denis Thorpe
Memory, as the gloriously unreliable narrator of Cider With Rosie probably wouldn't admit, is a strange, distorting thing. 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. That it is full of joy and humour. I'd have spoken about fun trips on charabancs, youthful energy, fecund nature and sexual awakening. I'd have laughed about funny local characters like Gran Trill and her lifelong, long-life rivalry with Granny Wallon. I'd perhaps have had an uncomfortable recollection of a midnight murder by a crossroads, and another of a suicide in a millpond. But beyond that, I'd have been sure that this was a book of spring ripening into summer, of blooming life and golden light.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. It is a lovely read."
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."
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