This is Laurie Lee’s love letter to the Cotswolds’ and his impoverished though rich childhood - a memoir filled with one memorable vignette after another. The trials and tribulations, the larks and adventures are all brought vividly to life by Lee, whose writing style is extravagantly evocative and assured. One feels transported, a voyeur or witness to a bygone place and era. I read with a smile and laughed several times – especially when mother would hold up the bus while she rinsed out her scarf or looked for her shoes [there is someone in my life very much like this]. I was often moved by the poignant depiction of melancholy events, never more so than by the death of his sister. Here is an excerpt:
“It was soon after this that my sister Frances died. She was a beautiful, fragile, dark-curled child, and my Morher’s only daughter. Though only four, she used to watch me like a nurse, sitting all day beside my cot and talking softly in a special language. Nobody noticed that she was dying herself, they were too much concerned with me. She died suddenly, silently, without complaint, in a chair in the corner of the room. An ignorant death which need never have happened – and I believe that she gave me her life.”
I loved the scenes at the village school. The country festivals. The story of all his uncles. Cider with Rosie under the wagon. Most of all I hated the father and wanted terrible things to happen to him for abandoning his family, and yet the mother’s reaction to his death and the horrible realization that her fantasies that he'd return and they’d spend their final days together were finally and forever torn asunder…well, I just wanted to fold her up in my arms and let her mourn all her dashed dreams.
I’ve read a number of very fine books this year, and this is one of the best.
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Reviews with images
beautifully told. The language is so beautiful conjuring up ...
This is a delightful story, beautifully told. The language is so beautiful conjuring up the images and situations being described. it is both innocent and keenly knowledgable. a sheer delight to read.
Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
Best book I’ve read in a long time.
Reviewed in Canada on March 3, 2022
Mr. Timothy Johnson
VERY GOOD EFFICIENT SERVICE
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 11, 2020