All Creatures Great And Small

***/*****                                                                                                       Memoir

All Creatures Great and Small

James Herriot

            James Herriot, soon after graduating as a veterinary doctor, joined the practice of Siegfried Farmon, a village veterinarian, as his assistant in the hilly county of Yorkshire Dales in late 1930s. These are memoirs of his initial years in practice. Book is a delightful easy read from first page to the last. Herriot is a born raconteur. He has a knack with words and the gift of gab. Employing apt words and befitting phrases, he brings alive the situations in his practice as a rookie vet doctor in the English countryside; the whimsical and lovable character of his employer; the daft and thrifty farmers who are reluctant to accept a new vet in the village; the dissolute, inveterate slacker Triston, brother of Siefgried; calving, farrowing, and foaling of animals as he lay prone on the cold stones of a barn full of muck; operating on horses and being kicked in the face; treating minor ailments of fanciful pet dogs of rich dowagers and being crowned Uncle Herriot of the dog; hard-headed yet empathetic farmers and their reticent, shy wives who surreptitiously leave loaves of bread or lumps of butter in his car when he visits their farms; the penny-pinching, cynical farmers who will not pay their bills for years and the generous, gregarious farmers who unfailingly invite him for dinner and drinks during his visits as they gradually accept him in their community; his courtship with his future wife who he meets first when he is called to their farm to treat their horse with a broken leg; the baffling illnesses in the animals and the matching ingenious remedies; a vastly rich farmer allegedly cold-hearted who looks after his two old horses even when they have not worked a day for last fifteen years and provides them with all comforts that he has denied to himself; and many more such fascinating tales. Cursorily, throughout the book, Herriot describes the natural beauty of Yorkshire hills in an unostentatious simple prose. Book informs the reader of the intricacies and peculiar problems of the rural veterinary practice and entertains throughout its length. A good book to spend a cold, foggy, winter-Sunday, tucked beneath a warm quilt, and a flask of coffee within arms’ reach.