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Nigeyb's Reviews > As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
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I’d already read Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy….
- Cider With Rosie (1959) (published in the U.S. as The Edge of Day (1960))
- As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969)
- A Moment of War (1991)
… around 2006, and loved each book. Just magnificent.
In 2016, I reread As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), and I am delighted to report it is every bit as good as I had remembered.
Laurie Lee's childhood, so beautifully and evocatively related in Cider With Rosie is over and Laurie Lee is now a young man. Rather than hang around in Slad, Gloucestershire, the Cotswold village where he’d spent his entire life, in 1934 he set out to find out what else the world had to offer. Never having seen the sea, he walked to Southampton, and then walked onto London to meet his girlfriend and work as a labourer for a year before going onto Spain where he walked the length of the country. For the most part he leads an itinerant existence busking as a fiddle player to generate money to eat and drink.
Laurie Lee’s poetic sensibilities are to the fore, and each page stunningly renders beautiful details of his day-to-day life: the landscape, the people he encounters, the smells, the food, the adventures, his feelings... If ever a book was written to give you wanderlust it is this one. That he is describing a lost world, on the cusp of modernity, makes it even more magical.
He leaves Spain on the brink of Civil War and, as he relates at this book’s conclusion, feels fraudulent for having left the country. He now feels personally invested in the struggle of Spain's poor and disenfranchised and, at end of this book, he arrives back in Spain to fight. What happens next is related in the third book in this marvellous trilogy - A Moment of War (1991) - and, if you haven’t read them, or even if you have, then you should read them/read them again at the earliest opportunity.
- Cider With Rosie (1959) (published in the U.S. as The Edge of Day (1960))
- As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969)
- A Moment of War (1991)
… around 2006, and loved each book. Just magnificent.
In 2016, I reread As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), and I am delighted to report it is every bit as good as I had remembered.
Laurie Lee's childhood, so beautifully and evocatively related in Cider With Rosie is over and Laurie Lee is now a young man. Rather than hang around in Slad, Gloucestershire, the Cotswold village where he’d spent his entire life, in 1934 he set out to find out what else the world had to offer. Never having seen the sea, he walked to Southampton, and then walked onto London to meet his girlfriend and work as a labourer for a year before going onto Spain where he walked the length of the country. For the most part he leads an itinerant existence busking as a fiddle player to generate money to eat and drink.
Laurie Lee’s poetic sensibilities are to the fore, and each page stunningly renders beautiful details of his day-to-day life: the landscape, the people he encounters, the smells, the food, the adventures, his feelings... If ever a book was written to give you wanderlust it is this one. That he is describing a lost world, on the cusp of modernity, makes it even more magical.
He leaves Spain on the brink of Civil War and, as he relates at this book’s conclusion, feels fraudulent for having left the country. He now feels personally invested in the struggle of Spain's poor and disenfranchised and, at end of this book, he arrives back in Spain to fight. What happens next is related in the third book in this marvellous trilogy - A Moment of War (1991) - and, if you haven’t read them, or even if you have, then you should read them/read them again at the earliest opportunity.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
June 23, 2012
– Shelved
May 20, 2016
–
Started Reading
May 20, 2016
–
7.21%
"I am just embarking on a re-read of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. It's like slipping into a warm bath after a winter's walk. Wonderful. It's good to be back with Laurie Lee."
page
15
May 21, 2016
–
9.62%
"A few mornings later, coming out of a wood near Beaconsfield, I suddenly saw London at last - a long smoky skyline hazed by the morning sun and filling the whole of the eastern horizon. Dry, rusty-red, it lay like a huge flat crust, like ash from some spent volcano, simmering gently in the summer morning and emitting a faint, metallic roar."
page
20
May 24, 2016
–
45.67%
"If ever there was a book to give you wanderlust then this must surely be it"
page
95
May 24, 2016
–
49.04%
"The chapter about Madrid conveys the best of all possible worlds - what a time to have been alive. The strangeness and perfection both lovingly and powerfully evoked. The reader is instantly transported there, living each glass of wine and confused conversation. Remarkable that this was only the second large city Laurie had ever visited."
page
102
May 25, 2016
–
Finished Reading
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Mike
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rated it 5 stars
May 25, 2016 09:37AM
I strongly agree. These are marvellous books, to be read again with pleasure every few years.
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