Mornings with Rosemary

Mornings with Rosemary was previously printed as The Lido. It is the same book.This was the most charming story about friendship, relationships and coming together as a community. This story's two main characters are Kate, a 26 year old woman who suffers severely from anxiety, and Rosemary, an 86 year old widow who spends her days swimming at the local pool called The Lido. Kate is a journalist and one day is assigned to write a story about The Lido since it is closing. Upon arriving to The Lido to start an interview, Rosemary tells Kate, "You can interview me once you go for a swim." Once Kate swims and starts interviewing Rosemary, the two women create a profound friendship that every person longs to have.I read this book with a group of wonderful ladies and I cannot thank them enough for introducing me to this book. During this pandemic, this book brought a lot of light and a lot of love back into the world even if it was just for a short time. This book touches on love, loss, friendship, aging and the importance of relationships. A book that has captured my heart.

As I write this I’m consumed with a deep book hangover. Mornings with Rosemary, previously The Lido, has been on my shelf for 2 years and I had no idea how much I would enjoy it. When picking a book for my National book club I decided this was a great choice for June. Not too long, light content, and who doesn’t enjoy swimming in warm summer months! What I didn’t expect was to shed tears and feel all these feelings. I was really happy that I got to discuss the book with my amazing book club and we unanimously agreed it’s a wonderful story. In preparation for my interview with the author I fell down a rabbit hole of looking at her social media which then took me to articles that were written about her and the Brockwell Lido, and then into outdoor swimming, benefits of swimming, and before I knew it I was excited to head to my local pool for a swim myself! I loved the beautiful friendship between the two main characters and I highly recommend this book to all my friends.Kate lives a life of solitude and truthfully she’s ok with that. Anxiety and previous panic attacks have kept her from doing much more than going to work and back home. When her boss asks her to look into a story about the local Lido possibly closing Kate has no idea how her life is about to change forever. She figures she’ll head over to the Lido and look around; maybe ask a few questions of the staff. Kate is directed to one of the pool regulars, an older lady named Rosemary. All Kate needs is to ask Rosemary some questions and she’ll be on her way back to work to write the article for the paper. What she doesn’t expect is for Rosemary to refuse the interview. Until Kate swims at the Lido Rosemary won’t speak to her. Kate returns self-conscious and afraid, swimming certainly not being anything she’s interested in trying, but she wants the story and so swimming she’ll go! Once she’s held up her end of the deal she sits down to interview Rosemary and learns not only about the history of the Lido, but the lives that have been touched, the friendships, and the amazing love story that Rosemary once had with her soul mate George, and the Lido. Kate finds a passion for swimming and a deep hunger for saving the Lido for the town, for Rosemary, and even for herself.

Mornings with Rosemary is a novel that dives deep into community, friendship and mental health. I LOVED all the characters. I was seriously so invested and felt my heart being pulled to these fictional characters.Telling the story of 86-year-old Rosemary who has lost her husband and sees her home town changing as the years pass by. Her only refuge is the Lido, that she has swam at since she was a young girl. Then there is Kate, a 26-year old with severe anxiety. She is a journalist at a local paper and feels the walls of loneliness closing in on her.A development company has sets their sights on the Lido and so Kate is assigned to write a piece for the paper. She meets Rosemary and their friendship blossoms almost instantly. Both women are transformed by their friendship and together they rally to "SAVE THE LIDO" while simultaneously building learning the value of community and overall it is never too late to make a friend or a difference💕Not every aspect of this story was "cheerful" but I could feel my heart just swelling as I read this book. I really would recommend it to anyone.

Satisfying summer read about standing up for what matters most when the locals' pool in Brixton, London, is threatened with closure. I read this while taking breaks from swimming at a pool in Manhattan and can attest to the harmonious experience of reading about the great delight of plunging into a pool betwixt reading this book! Recommended for its leisurely pace and colorful characters, most notably the author's protagonist, the octogenarian Rosemary, who has been swimming at this Lido since childhood. The only criticism I have is the last couple of chapters could have been cut as they felt both overly sentimental, as in the author didn't need to color in what the reader should at that point be feeling, and as the story had already been summed up without them.

Dear Rosemary, at 86, befriends a young woman journalist who really needs a friend. Rosemary, an avid outdoor swimmer for years, takes her friend to the neighborhood lido in London and her friend finds that she likes outdoor swimming. When the lido is threatened with closure and to be turned into tennis courts, Rosemary and the journalist form a partnership with the locals, and through newspaper articles make the public aware of the looming closure. That is the basic story. What is between the covers of this book is so much more. A story of unexpected friendships, finding love, and enduring love, the power of the press, and the positive power folks can find when they need it makes this a memorable, charming and lovely story.

I loved this book. Characters were rich and came alive when I was reading it. I kept wanting to go for a swim! Was also great reminder of how important community is. Having a beloved place where people gather to share common interests is an important part of the human experience.

Having seen a few reviews, I took a chance and purchased the Lido and what a joyful, emotional and exquisite read it was. I loved it so much, that it’s gone straight to the top of my favourite reads of the year so far.In essence this book is about friendship and its redemptive powers to heal, it’s about community and the things that connect us, it’s about love, loss and the cycle of life. Rosemary’s life has revolved around the Lido, especially caught up in it are memories of her beloved husband George and when it is threatened with closure, her world tilts on its axis and she faces the end of all she holds dear. Then there is Kate, for whom friendship with Rosemary and the fight to save the Lido from closure, offers her the possibility of release from the crushing, crippling loneliness that blights her life.It’s a very moving read, but at the same time it’s full of joy and positivity, a remarkable range of emotions to experience within the same book. I was reduced to tears, I laughed and I felt a sense of intense loss at having to leave the characters behind as the last page was turned. The story gently grabbed hold of me as I read on the train. The world sped by and I could have been anywhere physically, because I was immersed in the story, enveloped by lives of the characters, their individual journeys and how each dovetailed into the place that connected them. This is a character led story, with a gentle reading pace, perfect for losing yourself in. Even the Lido felt as an important a character as Rosemary and Katie, because it’s central to the story and wraps us and them in its embrace. Gentle and funny in places, heartbreaking and sad in others, it’s a story about people more than events.Rosemary is written with a deft hand, so much so, that I felt as if I knew her, she is caring, clever and I warmed to her within a few pages; while Katie struggling to find her place in the community, will remind so many readers of their own struggles, we have all at some time experienced her insecurities and yearning for friendship. There is richness in the depth and quality provided by all the supporting characters from Frank and Jermaine who run the book shop and Jay the photographer and they are all united by the battle to save the Lido. The layers of life within Brixton go as far as a fox that walks the streets, searching constantly for food, while the community searches for cohesion and the strength to fight off the developers.The Lido is a remarkable first book by a writer, who loves and understands the complex nature of community, who creates characters who we can all recognise and relate to.I look forward to what the writer does next.

This is by far the most boring book I have ever read. Not a single sentence sparkles, they are all dull, dull, dull.. There are no insightful asides or interesting observations, only the kind of bland uninspired writing one might come across when reading a provincial newspaper's report of a council meeting. The characters are cardboard figures, nothing is said or done that has any depth or could be of any possible interest to anyone, and there is no real story, at least not one worth telling. Life is too short to waste on a book as stale, flat and unprofitabe as this one.

The Lido is the story of two women - 26 year old Kate and 86 year old Rosemary - who come together to save a swimming pool and along the way save their community and themselves. It's sweet, charming, and of course utterly predictable. I kept thinking I'd finished it long before I had because it was so clear exactly where it was going. To be fair, that's not always a bad thing.Readers in other countries seem to love this quintessentially quirky English charm, often entirely without realising that 'Brixton Village' is not a village, it's a shopping centre and that Brixton itself is hard-core inner-city London, although deeply steeped in the inexorable drive of gentrification like any other place close to the action in London. Perhaps 'The Lido' will move people's immediate 'word-association-football' thoughts away from Brixton riots to Brixton Lido - even though of course, it's actually Brockwell Lido that forms the focus of this tale.My problem is that I don't really appreciate 'faction' - or rather fiction based on actual events but re-spun to bring it into a different era. Brockwell Lido did close back in 1990 before a local campaign got it back open again in 1994 under different management. When you take an actual place and attempt to rewrite its story, it leaves a bit of bad taste for some of us. There's also a bit of a sense of time-warp about this book. Kate has a job that's really hard to imagine in 2018 writing 'lost cat' stories for a local newspaper at a time when local papers are closing all over the country. Maybe the follow up should be a book to stop the closing of a local paper instead? I struggle to reconcile the simultaneous roles of print media and online campaigning.What I really did appreciate was the unashamed Englishness (not really even Britishness) of the book. Take a book about a place that most foreign readers won't even have heard of - Brixton - and focus it on a 'lido' - a term that few of them will understand. Heck, even younger Brits don't know what a lido is any more. Repeatedly I found myself cheering the author for not - pardon the pun - watering down the words that she used.I grew up in a town where the pool was an outdoor pool. I don't recall we ever called it a lido but I do know that it was never the same after the council shut it down and built an indoor one. The stench of chlorine and vending machine oxtail soup could never compete with the fresh air and sunshine of the outdoor pool. In my memory nobody ever got verrucas at the outdoor pool whilst the indoor one seemed fetid with moisture and bugs. Of course back then nobody used sun-cream and the lidos probably contributed horribly to the rise in skin cancers, but they were a part of our childhood and I'm very happy to know that a few still persist into the 21st Century. The whole concept of the lidos was based in a more innocent time when people didn't travel abroad, when the swimming pools represented untold glamour and healthy well-being. I hope that readers will have picked up some of that magic from Libby Page's book.

I had really high expectations of this book after it received such great reviews but I found it mediocre. The storyline was incredibly slow moving and it dragged on for at least 100 pages more than it needed to be. It wasn't gripping and I wouldn't recommend it.

I thought this was far from a feel good book. It grated a lot of the time and was not well written. I appreciate that this subject is very relevant at the moment. We have a lido at Saltdean and I can imagine how upsetting it would be to have these rather unusual outdoor baths covered over with concrete. It would have made a good documentary without all the oft repeated mushy stories. I would certainly not recommend this book. There are better 'feel good' novels around.