So They Call You Pisher!: A Memoir

by Michael Rosen

"If you didn't know whether to risk doing something, what's the worst that could happen? 'So they call you pisher!'"In this humorous and moving memoir, Michael Rosen recalls the first twenty-three years of his life. Born in the North London suburbs, his parents, Harold and Connie, both teachers, first met as teenage Communists in the 1930s Jewish East End. The family home was filled with stories of relatives in London, the United States and France and of those who had disappeared in Europe.Unlike the children around them, Rosen and his brother Brian grew up dreaming of a socialist revolution. Party meetings were held in the front room, summers were for communist camping holidays, till it all changed after a trip to East Germany, when in 1957 his parents decided to leave "the Party." Michael followed his own journey of radical running away to march against the bomb at Aldermaston, writing and performing in experimental political theatre and getting arrested during the 1968 movements.An audio version of this book, read by the author, is available

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, British Literature

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 12, 2017

About the author

Michael Rosen, a recent British Children’s Laureate, has written many acclaimed books for children, including WE'RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, and I’M NUMBER ONE and THIS IS OUR HOUSE, both illustrated by Bob Graham. Michael Rosen lives in London.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Owen Townend · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I can recall hearing a performance of his classic poem 'The Chocolate Cake' at junior school and glimpsing his impish face on television from time to time, I didn't discover Michael Rosen till recently. This started at university, in the form of YouTube Poops: cheekily-edited videos made from his recorded poetry. I laughed my head off at how easily all the exquisitely-performed lines became risque out of context. Then I watched the source videos and loved them too. I especially gravitated towards Rosen's poems for adults with their wry absurdity.

It was through these that I discovered the release of So They Call You Pisher!, an autobiography of Rosen's early years. I was pleased to read many of the same childhood stories from his poetry and to learn a bit more about his Jewish upbringing. Connie and Harold, his mum and dad, are absolutely stunning characters with a quick wit to match their parental worries and occasional disappointment. It gladdens my heart that Rosen grew up in such a quirky but loving household.

The political shift of that household from Communism to Socialism was also insightful, showing how the breakdown of Communism affected the Rosen family's friendships. Nevertheless I found the greater detail of this and their post-war immigration stories a little too dense and sombre for me to follow properly.

Regardless Rosen has led a rich and well-travelled life. It is wonderful to see how his sense of humour and passion for education and literature have been shaped in these tentative years. I look forward to a sequel about his time at the BBC and the early days of his poetry career.

In the meantime I recommend this book to adult fans of Michael Rosen and those looking to immerse themselves in what being part of a Jewish family of Socialist academics was like from the 1950s-70s.

[J.C. Greenway · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very enjoyable look back at Michael Rosen's childhood and the influence of his parents, Harold and Connie, on his upbringing. They met as young communists, eventually breaking with the party, they were Jewish but not practicing and they were both adding to their own education as the young Michael and his brother Brian were going through theirs, with all the postwar changes in education theories being a constant part of their lives.
Michael Rosen was raised in a home where ideas were always to be debated and challenged, which you can see coming through in his later work, although I found it encouraging - not to mention a enlightening change from many other autobiographies - that he didn't always know what he wanted to do and made what he felt were some missteps along the way.
His parents shine through the book as lively characters who allowed him plenty of freedom to explore (even sending him off to France alone at one point), debate and develop. And although they seem to have been a very tight-knit unit, the postscript where Rosen tracks down what happened to his extended family in America and Europe is fascinating and heartbreaking.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard for me to review this honestly as I have a personal connection. I used to know Mike Rosen years ago and also knew his father, Harold. We are the same generation and grew up in a very similar North London jewish community. We both went to Oxford to study the traditional disciplines favoured by jewish parents- medicine and law - and both gave them up. Although Mike became a children’s author and broadcaster and I became an English teacher, we both have a passionate interest in education. So, there was much in this memoir that was familiar to me and, therefore, enjoyable.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

a really nicely told set of stories from a man who experienced a lot in a fascinating time period. i've always had a soft spot for rosen as i'm sure a lot of kids in the uk do, whether they know it or not - and learning a while back that rosen is a jewish socialist with a lot of more interesting things to say outside the context of bear hunts or the dadaist poetry of the youtube poop. funnily enough, has inspired me to read more marx.

[Malene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book...part travel journal, childhood memories, political observations, life as a student and so much more. Clever, funny and poignant.

[Shân Petry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the first few chapters. Last few less interesting but it's a nice listen on audible, read by Michael himself.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in Michael Rosen’s very distinctive voice, I really enjoyed this memoir of his life until he left Oxford. Partly this was because he is so close in age to me (I’m 2 years older than him), and his life was so entirely different to mine. It made me ashamed that I had not noticed so much about the world as I grew up, in Taunton. His parents were both the children of Polish Jewish refugees and committed Communists. His childhood holidays were with other Communist families, camping, first in England and Wales and then France, where Michael holidayed also with the children of factory workers in an organised Communist camp. His parents were also academic and cheerfully faintly neglectful in the way parents were in the 50s and 60s. Michael discovered folk, jazz and lots of left wing political ideas.
London University to study medicine, transfer to Oxford, Wadham then changed to English. Involved with OUDS, acting and writing plays and skits, and then off to the BBC (of course!)
We almost crossed paths - I was at the Vietnam March in 1968, to the American embassy in Grosvenor Square but I wasn’t arrested, just went quietly home on the tube when it got violent. I joined IS but although Michael knew the leader he never joined anything. His autobiography ends rather abruptly when he leaves Oxford. I hope the next instalment(s) are on the way!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much - it is witty, perceptive, and also an interesting perspective on a period and social background which hasn't (yet) perhaps had so much written about it. It's a memoir of the author's youth up to the point of graduation, although it isn't always strictly chronological, and it covers the period 1946-1968 and mostly in suburban North London. Michael Rosen's parents were Jewish but not practising religious although he has a few brief encounters with Hebrew classes and a big Jewish family wedding - no Bar Mitzvah though! What a stimulating and interesting lot of activities he did outside school, including long summer holidays camping or in other arranged group visits, often abroad, and taking part in protests from an early age, including insisting on joining the big Aldermaston march in 1960 when only 13. (How I laughed at the description of a girl also on the march, who is not named personally but I think is someone I knew some years later. I would love to know whether she knows!)

I am a younger than Michael Rosen but a lot of what he says about his educational experiences struck a chord with me - in his case he experienced more than one school and contrasts them, but there is a lot about the system which had not changed much when I went through it around 15 years later. By a slightly circuitous route he ended up at Oxford reading English, and his account of his brushes with Dame Helen Gardner, particularly his viva, is eyebrow-raising to say the least! Helen Gardner was at my own college, where she was and is still held in high esteem, but this is not the first time I have heard or read less than admiring comments, which perhaps will come to light elsewhere too (she died in 1986, so people maybe feel safe to comment now).

The postscript is in the form of a letter to his now dead father, telling him about the family members whose fate (death at Auschwitz) he managed to uncover eventually through research. They were so close to possible escape, and nobody in the family knew what had happened to them - they were in France before the war, and not there afterwards, was the extent of knowledge of them.

A splendid evocation of 1950s/1960s life and society.

[Dan Sumption · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often, when reading an autiobiography, the childhood years seem a somewhat tiresome aperitif preceding the really interesting stuff. Here though, they are everything: Rosen's autobiography covers the time from his earliest memories, in the late 40s, up to his graduation from Oxford University during the student protests of 1968. It is a childhood recalled in surprising detail, and it provides many clues to how the young Michael Rosen cultivated the interests that led him to become a leading children's writer. His life was comfortable but not ordinary - the child of Jewish communists, something of an autodidact, with the confidence to take himself off to France alone for a summer in his teenage years. Just occasionally the prose is a little overwhelmed by tedious detail, but on the whole it's a fascinated read. And the prologue - a letter to the author's deceased father, telling him of the results of research into relatives "disappeared" during the Second World War - is unexpectedly moving.

[Marilyn Sparrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot and found it a very easy read and was entertained by the tales of Michael's school boy life and rebellions. Living in London I knew the places Michael referred to. His father Harold was a very strong character in the book and in Michael's life, his mother less so - she seemed more absorbed in her own life. Perhaps that is why Michael seemed to have a remarkable amount of freedom for his age eg going on the Aldermarston March aged 13. The only part of the book which jarred with me was when he was at Oxford and kept pointlessly name dropping eg Mike L who went on to become head of blah blah, John M who went on to be Director of blah blah. I was left wondering how and when Michael moved into writing Children's books and also what was the mysterious illness he hints at and were these two connected?

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only knew Michael Rosen as an author of children`s poems. My children and I love to watch his youtube channel.
It is an often hilarious story of growing up ex east-end, ex-communist and Jewish in a world long ago but not far away (for me in North West London).
You don`t have to be Jewish or leftie or a Londoner to enjoy this book, though, because it is a skilfully written account of a soul finding its way. I loved the way he showed and didn`t tell and the smatterings of cockney and yiddish.
I also appreciate his efforts to understand the motives of people in his life at the time.
This is how memoirs should be done.

[Laura Spira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this book and I'm slightly surprised by all the rave reviews. I was much more interested in Michael Rosen's parents than in him - and the coda addressing his father was probably the best bit. In a good autobiography the reader gets insights into where the author fits into his world and how he got to that place but this seemed to be a rambling description of the activities and thoughts of a rather boring teenager. Self-indulgent and solipsistic. I was also irritated by his attempts to translate Yiddish expressions, one of which was glaringly wrong.

I have now acquired his book on Zola and the Dreyfus case which I hope will be a better read.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fabulous title, and Michael Rosen, author of wonderful autobiographical work: The Sad Book, Carrying the Elephant, This is not my Nose... should be a very enjoyable memoir? Well, no... I'm not calling him pisher... but it wasn't the same sort of read at all. I felt it was quite scrupulously done: I felt his discomfort at some of the things he had done and I felt it did illustrate a general ability to hit a bum note in life from time to time. Perhaps because of the scrupulousness, the writing didn't flow, and it was something of a scratchy read. It also ran out where I hadn't expected it.

But it was certainly an interesting book with all kinds of odd little details and worth reading.

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a marvellous tale. Rosen takes us from his earliest memory through to the end of his university years and I was left feeling bereft that there was no more. He is such a perfect story teller. There is such charm in his recollection of his early days, as he recounts them with the sensibility and the imagination of the child he was. This is funny, clever, and exceptionally endearing. He's a national treasure and this memoir cements that and lays the foundation of everything that he has done since.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, I read Michael's good ideas book a year before and absolutely loved the way he tells stories about his life so when I came across Pisher in the library I had to read it. I wasn't disappointed it's such a great read and I love how Michael writes, his childhood sounds fascinating. I really couldn't put the book down from start to finish. Definitely buy this book it's an awesome read.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rich and intense memoir, beautifully written as you’d expect from Michael Rosen.
His parents were remarkable in their attitudes and Michael analyses their motives and actions thoughtfully.
I particularly enjoyed his French adventures and the inclusion of photos. It finishes as he leaves Oxford University, though with a heart breaking postscript dealing with his research into his father’s family history.

[Sarah Jordan]

loved it so much had to listen to it again on Audio books. Also went to hear him talk about it at Waterstones. I thought I was already a Micheal Rosen groupie but I learnt lots more about him from this.

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can hear Michael Rosen's voice when you read this. Sometimes the way he explains things doesn't make sense to me but I think that makes reading this book more of an experience of his storytelling rather than a lecture on his life. I liked it a lot.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not read, listened from audible. Michael Rosen’s books are better when listening to (maybe even better if watching). He is a master to tread lightly even happily when introduce readers to a human tragedy. Hat off.

[Steve Lawless · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfinished

[Schopflin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is funny, as you might expect but fascinating, intelligent and hugely insightful into both his life and how we as individuals negotiate growing up, our families and our various lives.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved learning about Michael and his family. Such interesting and funny people.

[Dee Howard]

Obviously very funny - I really enjoyed it.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny, I really enjoyed this book. Michael had a extraordinary upbringing.