Contemporary Literary Criticism | Lee, Laurie - The Times Literary Supplement (review date 9 October 1969)

The Times Literary Supplement (review date 9 October 1969)

SOURCE: "Fiddler's Eye View," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3528, October, 9, 1969, p. 1155.

[In the following review, the critic favorably assesses As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.]

Laurie Lee writes with such apparent ease that [As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, this] autobiographical sequel to Cider with Rosie may be discounted, by readers who think only those books good which are tough going, as merely a charming picaresque trifle. But it is a work of art the finer for appearing artless.

The nineteen-year-old Laurie Lee leaves his home in Stroud, Gloucestershire, to walk to London: a folk-hero like Dick Whittington, except that instead of a cat he has his fiddle, and he does not want to make his fortune, merely his mark as a poet. And on his journey a straight line is not the shortest distance between his point of departure and...

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