Rosie

Scenes from a Vanished Life

Rose Tremain author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:11th Apr '19

Should be back in stock very soon

Rosie cover

A memoir from one of our best-loved and best-selling authors. A beautiful and compelling glimpse into a world now lost and the birth of a writer

*The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller*

Rose Tremain (or Rosie as she was then) grew up in post-war London – a city still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed.

*The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller*

Rose Tremain (or Rosie as she was then) grew up in post-war London – a city still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed.

But when she is ten years old, everything changes. She loses her father, her house, her school, her friends and is dispatched to a freezing boarding-school in Hertfordshire. Slowly though, the teenage Rosie escapes from the cold world of the Fifties, into a place of inspiration and friendship, where a young writer is suddenly ready to be born.

‘An evocative, unflinching memoir...electric’ Mail on Sunday

Rose Tremain famously eschews autobiographical material in her fiction, so this account of her childhood feels so fresh it stings… [she] brings her formidable talent for characterisation to bear on the vanished, culpable cast of her childhood -- Claire Lowdon * Sunday Times, **Books of the Year** *
Rose Tremain manages to fit more wisdom, more unforgettable scenes, more illuminating recollections, into this 194-page memoir than other writers do in memoirs three times the length. A book as nourishing, but concise as this makes you wonder why other writers have to be so long-winded ... For anyone who loves Tremain's novels this memoir is a vital companion -- Ysenda Maxton Graham * The Times *
Intriguing and moving ... So much more alert and open and alive than so many slightly disappointing memoirs by otherwise great writers ... Rosie is a work of self-discovery in the best possible sense of the word - it pulls you in, unsettles, comforts and exhilarates and, finally, makes you see your life anew -- Julie Myerson * The Spectator *
Rose Tremain turns to non-fiction for the first time with this lyrical account of her life up to the age of 18 ... The evocation of 1950s schoolgirldom, with all its emotions, elations and smells, is wonderfully vivid - distinctive, like being donated a set of dreams ... A quiet drama, but as you'd expect it's the writing that makes this book such a delight -- Claire Harman * Evening Standard *
A beautifully written ode to the tenacity of our younger selves -- Francesca Brown * Stylist *
This poignant memoir ... A telling portrait of what went into the making of one of our most acclaimed novelists -- Fanny Blake * Woman & Home *
The author uses her considerable narrative skills of set-up and delayed revelation to keep the reader enthralled ... Fans of her novels will know that Tremain has a brilliant eye for visual information, vividly deployed here -- John Walsh * The Sunday Times *
An evocative, unflinching memoir ... electric -- Hephzibah Anderson * The Mail on Sunday *
I was startled, but also very moved, by the almost abrasive directness of Rose Tremain's memoir Rosie. It did exactly what memoirs ought to do: made me want to rush straight back to her fiction -- Julie Myerson * The Observer *
Compelling, moving and nostalgic in its evocation of a bygone era -- Charlotte Heathcote * Daily Express *

ISBN: 9781784708016

Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 15mm

Weight: 197g

240 pages