I think that the students in our school library need to hear lots of diverse voices and read stories and lives of many different kinds of people and experiences. When I inherited the library it was an incredibly sanitised space with only 'school readers' and project books on 'the railways' etc. Buying in books that will appeal to the whole range of our readers with diverse voices, eclectic and fascinating subject matter, and topics that will intrigue and fascinate them was incredibly important to me.
This is a book that I think our senior readers will enjoy very much indeed - not just because it's well written with an arresting voice that will really keep them reading and about a fascinating topic - but it's also a book that doesn't feel worthy or improving, it doesn't scream 'school library and treats them like young reading adults who have the right to explore a range of modern diverse reads that will grip and intrigue them and ensure that reading isn't something that they are just forced to do for their English project - this was a solid ten out of ten for me and I'm hoping that our students are as gripped and caught up in it as I was. It was one that I stayed up far too late reading and one that I'll be recommending to the staff as well as our senior students - thank you so much for the chance to read and review; I really loved it and can't wait to discuss it with some of our seniors once they've read it too!

Rosie by Rose Tremain is a must for the completists among Tremain fans, and is an interesting read about her unhappy childhood. The thing I took away from this was the value in just one person loving you (in her case, it was a lovely, kind nanny). The trouble with being such a brilliant novelist is that her nonfiction is never going to be as good as her novels, but Rosie is worth a read nevertheless.

I don’t think I’ve read enough of Rose Tremain’s books to really describe myself as a fan or as any kind of expert on her work, but I’ve enjoyed the little I’ve read by her – Restoration and Merivel, her two novels set in 17th century England and France, and The Gustav Sonata, set in Switzerland before, during and after the Second World War – so I decided to give her recent memoir, Rosie, a try.

Judging purely by the cover and the subtitle Scenes from a Vanished Life, I was expecting something light, charming and nostalgic, but the reality was very different and the book left me feeling quite sad. It’s a slim book covering only the first eighteen years of the author’s life and I think it’s fair to say that Rose – or Rosie, as she was known when she was younger – didn’t have the happiest start to life. Born into an upper-middle-class family, with all the privilege and opportunity that comes with that, the one thing Rosie lacks is parental love. She is ten years old when her playwright father, Keith, leaves her mother, Jane, for a younger woman. Jane quickly remarries and sends Rosie and her sister, Jo, to boarding school, an incident Tremain thinks of as ‘The Great Casting Away’ and which she describes with both resentment and an attempt to understand:

"When we were safely away in our cold dormitories at Crofton Grange, she and her friends could forget all about their children’s future. Instead, they could go to plays, go to films, go to restaurants, get drunk at lunchtime, flirt, shop, swear, take taxis, waste money, go dancing, have sex, and wander through London in the dawn light, laughing, determined to forget the war that had stolen their youth and so many of the people they’d loved."

The child Rosie is often hurt and confused by her mother’s actions, and not much has changed by the time she reaches adulthood; when her first play is broadcast on BBC radio in 1976, Jane says she is too busy to listen as she is going out to lunch that day. Rosie does acknowledge, however, that her mother’s lack of affection for her could be partly due to her own upbringing. Many of Rosie’s childhood memories revolve around holidays spent at her maternal grandparents’ home, Linkenholt Manor, but it quickly becomes clear that it is the house that holds a special place in her heart and not her grandparents themselves. Mabel and Roland Dudley, Jane’s parents, are depicted as cold, stern people who have struggled to move on from the loss of their two sons and see their daughter as a poor substitute; their granddaughters interest them even less. I found this so sad because my own childhood relationship with my grandparents was completely different – warm and loving and full of fun. The only love Rosie seems to receive comes from her nanny, Vera Sturt, and I was glad that she had at least one person who cared about her, although even this relationship was lost when she was sent away to boarding school.

As the title of the book suggests, the world of Tremain’s childhood is a world that has now largely vanished. Her account of her school days, of beliefs and attitudes and of society in general could only have been written by someone growing up in the 1950s and belonging to a certain class. As Rosie becomes a young adult and sets her sights on attending Oxford University, she sees her dreams shattered yet again when her mother insists on sending her to a Swiss ‘finishing school’ instead. Jane doesn’t see the need for her daughter to continue her education when all a woman needs to do to succeed in life is to find a rich husband.

Despite her privileged background then, Tremain still had obstacles to overcome as she grew from Rosie into Rose and embarked on her writing career. Because her memoir ends before the publication of her first book, she doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing her writing, but she does give us a few insights into how incidents, people and places from her early life later found their way into her novels. I’m sure this would have meant more to me if I had read more of her work! The book ends very abruptly, which was disappointing as I would have liked to have continued to follow Rose through her adult years. Still, it was interesting getting to know the young Rosie and her world.

Wie man wird, was man ist, wenn man nicht genug hat, was man braucht. Eine bewegende und mitreissende (Lebens-) Geschichte die Mut macht.

Anyone who has enjoyed Rose Tremain's books will be intrigued by this memoir, (with its picture of a privileged, yet miserable childhood), despite the fact that I felt so much was left out or unexplained. It does not compare with her novels or short stories, although maybe that his how it should be. As a companion piece to the fiction it is well worth a read.

What a delightful read. So interesting and brought back memories of my own childhood. I particularly found the relationship between Rose and her mother intriguing and the relationship with the grandparents and her mother too.

Growing up in the sixties I too was told be a shorthand typist you will always have a job and felt the same feeling of dissatisfaction.

This is a fascinating read. I had not realised quite how old Rose Tremain is, despite the fact that I have been reading her books for several decades now. I was surprised to see what an old fashioned world she was raised in. Her childhood in the Forties and Fifties was enormously privileged and she writes about a world that is long gone now, but in such a vivid way that it springs to life from the page. The book deals with Rose's childhood and young adulthood and stops in her early twenties as she is about to break from her mother's authority. Her life as a novelist since then is covered in a few short pages, yet where with other autobiographies I might feel short changed, I did not at all with this book. It was enchanting.

An interesting read about Rose's childhood and the inspiration that led to her books. This is an enjoyable easy read.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I've always enjoyed Rose Tremain's books and having read her memoir I can see where much of her writing originated. Having said that, I could have done without the references made to her books throughout the memoir. She certainly had an interesting and very specific lifestyle seemingly experiencing polarities in her living conditions, wealth and relationships. I don't know if she's intending writing a second memoir as I thought this ended quite abruptly. It's a pleasant read.

I found this beautifully written memoir a vivid and evocative account of Rose Tremain’s childhood and adolescence. Tremain writes with sensitivity and without self-pity, and her tone is measured, objective and honest. In spite of her outwardly privileged upbringing, her mother’s coldness was a major cause of unhappiness for her, and I admire her strength in in dealing with this and becoming the successful novelist she was determined to be. An engaging and enjoyable read.

Rosie Tremain tells this story of her childhood into the birth of her as a writer beautifully. Her early life with her rather aloof parents was interspersed with glorious free summers at her grandparents in Hampshire. At the age of ten everything changed and she lost her father, home , school and all that she loved. She was sent to a freezing boarding school and, although it was tough, she forged friendships with other girls sharing the same tortuous conditions and teachers who nurtured her. You feel for this scrap of a girl but give a cheer when she succeeds, despite her mother, father and grandparents coldness. A great read.

I have enjoyed several of Rose Tremain’s novels so was delighted to receive a review copy of this memoir of her youth. I hadn’t realised her childhood had been quite so difficult and admire her determination to create a happy and fulfilling adult life for herself. I hope she found it therapeutic to reminisce in this way and make some sense of why her parents were as they were and treated her and her sister as they did.

The sisters suffer variously from neglect, indifference and, in Rose’s case, deliberate thwarting of her academic ambition. One passage struck me as particularly insightful. It follows on Rose’s realisation that her mother envied her the easy post-war generation she is born into.

‘I think that when we were around her, she didn’t feel as though she was living. ….. When we were safely away in our cold dormitories at Crofton Grange, she and her friends could forget all about their children’s future. Instead, they could go to plays, go to films, go to restaurants, get drunk at lunchtime, flirt, shop, swear, take taxis, waste money, go dancing, have sex, and wander through London in the dawn light, laughing, determined to forget the war that had stolen their youth and so many of the people they’d loved. They were making up for lost time. With disintegrating marriages, they knew that life was slipping by for them, but that for us - the bloody children! - it was infinite. We had years in an apparent peacetime wonderland ahead. It wasn’t fair.’

This memoir only covers Rose’s first 18 years, the majority spent at a boarding school that served her well in terms of lasting friendships and quality teaching - she may have been deprived of a family environment but she certainly struck lucky that her parents could afford a good school. It ends, though, with her finally taking control of her own future and we know that this marks the beginning of a new life for her, free of her parents’ influence and at last able to follow her own path.

Rose Tremain's childhood is cross between Mallory Towers and a Dickens novel. Fascinating stuff - I wanted to know more about her mother, who appears as a rather self centered character but probably had some very interesting tales to tell.

I loved all the detail about her childhood, the schools, her nanny and life in 1950s Britain. I was not so fussed by Rose Tremain's notes relating the text to her books, not sure why as I enjoy her books, maybe it felt like an intrusion into what was a great read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a fascinating insight into the early, formative years of the writer Rose Tremain. There is a lot of sadness here and a great deal of life experience to relate and to relate to. Her emotionally cold grandmother passed on her (pretty terrible) parenting skills to her mother, significantly referred to as 'Jane' throughout, and Rosie, as she was known as a child, had a bleak experience as a result. The figure of Nan, her Nanny, provides the warm, attuned care giving that any child needs and it was a great relief to read of their relationship.

Tremain generously attributes this coldness to the impact of the loss of beloved sons for her grandmother, but it has to be suspected that she would still have sent poor Jane off to school far too young, just to be rid of her so that she could focus on her beloved boys. She is equally generous in not reflecting too angrily on the lack of insight into the parenting process that Jane displays.

However, this is far from a joyless recount of a dismal childhood. Rosie is resilient and able to get the best out the myriad situations in which she finds herself, makes positive relationships at school and develops ambitions for herself. Particularly interesting is the link between events in her child hood and those of her novels, and she demonstrates these clearly. There is some need to go back to the early novels and re read them in the light of this autobiography, and it is always a pleasure to make those links when reading..

If you have read and enjoyed her writing I strongly recommend this, it is such a vivid and interesting read and I look forward to another volume continuing the story of her life.

An insight into the supposed privileged life of the upper middle class during the 1950s, this memoir by Rose Tremain tells us what it was really like. Totally selfish parents with no consideration for their children, who eventually divorce, throwing the family into further turmoil. Children sent off to boarding school to get them out of the way. Rose Tremain describes her nanny as the one person who really loved her during her childhood, and was the person she loved in return. So much for the life of privilege, this memoir really pulls aside the veil on that! I found this quite a sad and shocking story, particularly when considered from the modern viewpoint. Very interesting on 1950s boarding school life and then the eventual finishing school. (Obviously Rose was not allowed to take up a place Oxford university as nobody wants a blue stocking for a daughter!) These young women were moulded for the marriage market and nothing else. Trained to become secretaries in the short term with a view to snagging a rich husband. I’m so glad times have changed! Definitely a worthwhile read, and a good insight into the life and attitudes of 1950s Britain.

Rose Tremain is one of my favourite authors and her skill as a writer shines through in her biography. The influences of her early life is really interesting to see how it shaped her as a writer and how long her writing success took. All fans of her fiction will find this a fascinating read.

In 'Rosie', Rose Tremain describes a childhood that is a mix of privilege, post-war austerity, and a fairly dysfunctional family life, pervaded by loss and an absence of parental love. We follow her to boarding school, which at first seems like torment, but then offers young Rose friendship and some inspirational teachers, and then on to finishing school which her mother believes will save her from a 'bluestocking' daughter.

This is an immensely readable memoir, a real-life take on boarding school stories and the Chalet School. Although there are some helpfully specific footnotes which link 'real life' incidents with passages in some of her novels, there is something very guarded about this memoir: rather than shedding light on her development as an author, the real purpose of the book seemed to be to show that Tremain had overcome her loveless childhood to establish a good relationship with her own child and grandchild.