Hippy Dinners: A memoir of a rural childhood

(Paperback)

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Memoir of a childhood 'living the dream' in 1970s Wales. Emma Kennedy (the Tent the Bucket & Me) meets Laurie Lee (Cider with Rosie). In 1972 Abbie Ross's cosmopolitan parents move the family from London to rural North Wales, exchanging a town house in Islington for a remote farmhouse on a hill. Abbie's Liverpudlian grandparents - dedicated followers of Liberace, sleek in scented mohair and patent leather - are sure they've lost their minds. For Abbie, though, the only cloud on the horizon is the nearby hippy commune and its inhabitants. There are worrying signs that this is the sort of 'better life' that her parents have in mind. Brilliantly evoking a particular time and place, Abbie's memoir re-creates a world of dens and pineapple chunks, of John Craven's Newsround and fishing for sticklebacks - and the joy but also the burning powerlessness of being a child. Disgusted by her father's 'yogic flying' and her mother's taste for brown bread and billowing cheesecloth (with no bra), Abbie is desperate not to be different. Far better, she thinks, to fit in with shouting, pathologically nosy Sara across the fields,or stay close to Philip next door - paralysingly shy and with a preference for orange food and no trousers ('nice to have a bit of air') ... Rich with detail that reveals a whole world, Hippy Dinners is very funny and full of heart. It is also a delicate and astute portrait of the brutal realities of 'a simple life'.

Reviews

Rosss vivid evocation of a Seventies childhood ... has great charm. Anyone who grew up in the era of Benny Hill, cheesecloth and Charlies Angels will find it irresistible. -- Jane Shilling * Daily Mail *
Charged with delicious quirky wit and a joyful celebration of the ordinary, this is an irresistible account of a child's passage towards the adult world. -- Rachel Joyce
Hippy Dinners is an absolute joy ... It is both sweetly moving and killingly funny. * Horatio Clare *
Spot on and very funny about desperately wanting to be normal. * Nina Stibbe, Author of Love, Nina *
Shot through with wit that is at once knife-sharp and full of warmth, HIPPY DINNERS recreates the fragile, half-understood world of childhood with glorious polaroid immediacy. I loved it. -- Christopher Wakling

Author Bio

Abbie Ross moved from London to North Wales aged two and lived there until her family moved to West Gloucestershire when she was twelve. She has a Psychology degree from Cardiff University and worked for Aardman Animations as a senior commercial producer. She lives in Bristol with her husband and children and is working on a novel.