‘There, there, it’s all right, don’t you wail any more. They leaned over me – one, two, three – their mouths smeared with red currants and their hands dripping with juice. Faces of rose, familiar, living huge shining faces hung up like shields between me and the sky faces with grins and white teeth (some broken) to be conjured up like genii with a howl, brushing off terror with their broad scoldings and affection. They came scrambling and calling up the steep rough bank, and parting the long grass found me. I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully.įrom this daylight nightmare I was awakened, as from many another, by the appearance of my sisters. I was lost and I did not expect to be found again.

For the first time in my life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning. Just because the assault doesn't happen 'to completion,' the planning of it makes me feel like I just got a pair of special sunglasses à la 'They Live,' in which the protagonist can finally see things the way the actually are and suddenly I don't feel so nostalgic for the small Cotswold village.For the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans.įor the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans. And while 'nothing happens' from the author's perspective, what about the girl's? Did she still walk that path? Did she still feel safe going out alone? It breaks my heart to think about. But the whole time they are plotting was just so unsettling for me to read because I read it from the perspective of the girl who goes walking along the same route, feeling perfectly safe, having no idea that the boys in her village are watching and plotting and think nothing about her. Some people think this is kind of humorous because the girl simply slaps the boys and they all run away like big scaredy-cats.

I could then medium enjoy the vignettes contained within until.late in the book a group of boys plan to gang rape a local girl. But eventually I got used to the gravelly old man voice and even if I didn't grow to like it, at least it didn't bother me as much. Oh what a lovely description of growing up in a small Cotswold village after WWI, where times were simpler and-SCREECH-Hey lads, who wants to plan a gang rape! When I started this I thought the worst thing I would have to say about it was that 'authors shouldn't automatically be allowed to read their own works.' And how.

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee