In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young
Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of
veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile
setting of veterinary school. From caring for his patients in the depths of
winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and
critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending
challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the
animal world shine forth. (Goodreads)
Reviewed by
Laura Madsen
I’ve just
reread All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot (1972). James Herriot
(real name: James Alfred Wight) was a veterinarian in rural Yorkshire in the
1930’s. He wrote a series of memoirs of veterinary life, published from the
1970’s through 90’s. I first read the series in high school, then reread it
soon after graduating from vet school.
Herriot makes
writing seem easy. Reading his stories is like sitting around a cozy fireplace
listening to a kindly fellow telling stories. His phrasing seems effortless,
but every word and sentence is precise, as in, “I pulled out the syringe box
and selected a wide-bored needle. My fingers, numb with the special kind of cold
you felt in the early morning with your circulation sluggish and your stomach
empty, could hardly hold it.” (That brings back unpleasant memories of the
profound exhaustion of midnight emergency calls.)
Each chapter is
only a few pages long, a vignette of a particular patient or client. Although
he talks about medical issues, the stories are more about the people—their
personalities, attitudes toward their animals, and relationships with family
and neighbors. For example, one chapter is framed around an old dog in
congestive heart failure, but the real spirit of the story centers on the dog’s
owner, a little old lady whose love of her pets—and Herriot’s assurance that
animals have souls—help her find the courage to face her looming mortality.
The descriptions
of place are beautiful, as in this passage:
I realised,
quite suddenly, that spring had come. It was late March and I had been
examining some sheep in a hillside fold. On my way down, in the lee of a small
pine wood I leaned my back against a tree and was aware, all at once, of the
sunshine, warm on my closed eyelids, the clamour of the larks, the muted
sea-sound of the wind in the high branches. And though the snow still lay in
long runnels behind the walls and the grass was lifeless and winter-yellowed,
there was a feeling of change; almost of liberation, because, unknowing, I had
surrounded myself with a carapace against the iron months, the relentless cold.
As a
veterinarian, I also love to read Herriot because I’ve encountered many of the
same situations with my patients and clients. It doesn’t matter that he
practiced large animal medicine in England in the 1930’s while I’m practicing
small animal medicine in America in the 2010’s—people and animals are the same
all over.
The opening
line is: “They didn’t say anything about this in the books, I thought, as the
snow blew in through the gaping doorway and settled on my naked back.” (He’s
pulled off his shirt to reach deep into a cow to deliver a stuck calf.) Yup. I
can think of hundreds of situations when I thought, They didn’t teach
me this in vet school. Like, how do you repair a lacerated tongue on a
cockatoo? How do you treat a seagull with head trauma? What do you do when a
scared feral cat is running amok in your surgery suite?
Recommended for
anyone who loves animals, England, or plain old good writing.
Market: Adult
nonfiction, memoir
Language: mild
Violence: none
Sensuality:
none, except for some chaste courting of his wife-to-be
Adult themes:
life and death
Book formats:
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