5.0 out of 5 stars
The Hills are Dying with the Sound of Lee, Nov 25 1999
I happen to live in the Cotswolds, the setting for this beautiful book, this Monet of literature. And, complying with the below reviews, I have to say that Stroud has become a concrete river, choked with litter, sidelined with Burger Stars, neon lights; a MacDonalds is in the blue print stages. Hills are lined with new developments. It's like, and I quote my mother, "A disease is spreading."
Yet there are places untouched by Americanisms, consumerism, electricity (and here I apologise, as this becomes less of a review, more an account of personal experience). But there are still rivers afloat with leaves, valleys deep that welcome sunsets. They frost the sky in winter, burn it by summer.
"There's beauty in decay," as someone said. Haven't got a clue who. But there you go. Although dying of shallow needs and commercial interests, snippets of the old way can be found. And in all their glory, too.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
On my Top Ten List., Aug 8 1999
This book was required reading during my childhood and, of course, I couldn't have dragged myself more slowly through it. How wise we become with age. This is an astonishing book. Lee is such a master of description that, after only a few pages, you slowly start to smell the fresh country air and hear the languid sounds of summer as you are inescabably drawn into the world of his childhood - a world that you realize has already faded into the mists of history. But this special time has not been lost - it has been captured forever in this irreplacable series of pictures. The people in these stories become more real than seems possible with only pen and ink: his characterizations are as clever as anything by Dickens or Dostoevski, and he catches the very essence of the sights, sounds and people around him with a charm unmatched by any other English writer. But this is not a story-book universe: the people in his young life have all the frailty, vanity, delight and tragedy that you would expect in any small community - but what other has been crystallized with such talent and wisdom. A wonderful work of art.
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