Description

*A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2018*

*The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller*

Rose Tremain grew up in post-war London, a city of grey austerity, still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed. The girl known then as ‘Rosie’ and her sister Jo spent their days longing for their grandparents’ farm, buried deep in the Hampshire countryside, a green paradise of feasts and freedom, where they could at last roam and dream.

But when Rosie is ten years old, everything changes. She and Jo lose their father, their London house, their school, their friends, and — most agonisingly of all — their beloved Nanny, Vera, the only adult to have shown them real love and affection.

Briskly dispatched to a freezing boarding-school in Hertfordshire, they once again feel like imprisoned castaways. But slowly the teenage Rosie escapes from the cold world of the Fifties, into a place of inspiration and mischief, of loving friendships and dedicated teachers, where a young writer is suddenly ready to be born.

Publisher Review

"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 * "Compelling, moving and nostalgic in its evocation of a bygone era" -- Charlotte Heathcote * Daily Express * "Tremain did not publish her first fiction until she was 33 - this disquieting, beautifully crafted memoir shows that she was in training to be a writer from the start" -- Catherine Taylor * Irish Times * "Dream-like vignettes of a girl - and a world - that no longer exists ... Rosie is endlessly intriguing." -- Lucy Scholes * The Independent * "That most polished and elegant of novelists, Rose Tremain, has produced a memoir of her first 18 years, marked by her characteristic clarity of style and sensitivity to detail" -- Rupert Christiansen * The Daily Telegraph * "This slim, elegant - sometimes shocking - study of maternal failure is also a love letter to her nanny" -- Lisa Allardice * The Guardian * "In the manner of a certain kind of photograph album, it captures rather beautifully a privileged postwar world ... Fascinating ... Perfectly delicious in its way" -- Rachel Cooke * The Observer * "Independent of sentimental convention ... candid ... [an] arresting book" -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * The Guardian * "In crisp, elegant, mostly dispassionate prose, the award-winning author of The Way I Found Her, Restoration and The Gustav Sonata unravels her upper-middle-class family history" -- Eithne Farry * Sunday Express *