Synopsis
The author of All Creatures Great and Small offers readers a collection of new memoirs, describing the family and friends who share his life on the Yorkshire dales. 750,000 first printing. Major ad/promo.
Reviews
YA-- A master storyteller continues the charming account of his experiences as veterinarian in rural Yorkshire. And although there are more cats and dogs as patients than before, there are plenty of large farm animals to deal with, frequently during the middle of the night. The detailed but succinct descriptions of people, places, and animals are a delight. Herriot's unusual ability to identify individual characters, both human and four-legged, brings them to life--even for the most urban American. The endearing strand weaving all episodes together is the constant devotion of man to animal and animal to man. Chapters are short, the pace is rapid, and the stories are very easy to read--perfect for unmotivated readers. The author's keen sense of humor will bring smiles to the faces of YAs, particularly when he tells a joke on himself. Nonfiction at its most entertaining best.
- Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Smashingly good sequel to the beloved veterinarian's earlier memoirs, and well worth the ten-year wait since The Lord God Made Them All. Although no exact dates are given, Herriot seems to pick up just where he left off, in the 1960's in rural Yorkshire, when veterinary medicine was still a barehanded, rough-and-tumble affair, with farm animals the main patients and infection a constant threat. (Herriot seems to spend half his time slipping on cow turds or with his arm up a cow's vagina, helping a birthing calf see the light of day.) The author's superbly gifted partner, Siegfried, is back, as is Herriot's loving wife, Helen. But the practice has expanded and much of the good feeling here involves two assistants: John Crooks, who goes on to become a world-class vet, and Calum Buchanan, eccentric supreme, who eats ducks with feathers attached and collects a menagerie of badgers, foxes, monkeys, and rabbits before setting out for Papua New Guinea. Herriot buys a house; dresses like a buffoon to save a client's farm; comes down with a dreadful cow disease; tends to our old friend Tricky Woo, Mrs. Pumphrey's spoiled Pekingese; and, in general, sheds his benign presence on a zooful of animals and a zooful of human beings. The milieu is deliciously familiar--``a dirty, dangerous job'' made glorious by ``the whole rich life.'' So is the moral--that love of animals is synonymous with love of human beings, and that there can never be too much of either. Crafted with foxy intelligence and angelic compassion: proof that for a ``vitnery'' in the Yorkshire dales, life is bliss--and bliss, too, for a few hours at least, for happy readers. (Book-of- the-Month Dual Selection for October) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Reading Herriot's book is like listening to the stories of a very old friend. Familiar. Comforting. A little repetitious. His stories of veterinary work in the Yorkshire dales ( All Creatures Great and Small , LJ 8/72; All Things Bright and Beautiful , LJ 10/15/74) have brought to many city folk a sense of wonder and an understanding of the life of a country vet and his patients, both human and animal. In this collection, an older and perhaps more tired Herriot struggles with bad - tempered farmers, difficult diagnoses, an assistant who travels with a live badger, and his own pet cats, who will have nothing to do with him. While the stories and settings hark back to his previous works, the humor and spark are missing. The older Herriot struggles to maintain the wonder and merriment of his youth but gets bogged down in the mundane aspects of shopping for a house and seems numbed rather than heartbroken by the death of some of his patients. Demand will warrant multiple copies, but for the first-time Herriot reader, recommend his earlier works. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/92.
- Debra Schneider, Virginia Henderson Internat. Nursing Lib., Indianapolis
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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