Which of these books for next Book Group choice??

[Clawdy]

Cider With Rosie (Laurie Lee) or The Five People You Meet In Heaven ( Mitch Albom ). My last six choices were all women writers, so decided to pick one of these two. Any thoughts?

I have only read Cider with Rosie, so can't comment on the other one. However, I would highly recommend it. It's a very good and interesting book – also much darker than people expect. Life in the countryside wasn't all cider and sunshine. In some ways, he's closer to authors like Thomas Hardy and A. E. Housman. Rural life could be brutal and insular and nasty.

I haven’t read cider with Rosie but 5 people you meet is wonderful. Very emotional read - I rarely cry at a book but I cried buckets, especially at the end. It was cathartic.

Thanks!

I saw a play of Cider with Rosie many, many years ago and I still think of it sometimes.

I loved "Cider With Rosie" - as a PP said, it's not just whimsical rural idylls. If you like it, then you could also check out "Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve" by Dannie Abse.

I've read both and Cider with Rosie would be my preference. It's so evocative and gentle.

This is quite true. CWR is very very dark in places. Great book though. I did it for English O level about 100 years ago!

Definitely CWR. The writing is fantastic; poetical. It's evocative but I wouldn't call it gentle. There's no sugar-coating of the rural life.
5People is, IIRC, sentimental tosh.

Exactly this. Cider With Rosie is deservedly a classic, gorgeously written, evocative, sometimes grim, a paean to a landscape, sociologically fascinating as a portrait of a lost society.

The Mitch Albom novel is basically ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, but waaay more sugar coated.

If you’re thinking along the lines of Cider With Rosie but would prefer fiction, I’d recommend A Month in the Country by JL Carr, a brilliant short novel about a shell-shocked WWI veteran recovering while uncovering a medieval wall painting in a Yorkshire village church just after the end of the war. It’s a pretty much perfect novel (also filmed with a very young Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh in the eighties).

Oh I did too! It was the book that got me back into reading 🫶

Thanks for these really helpful comments.