preview

All Creatures Great And Small By James Herriot

Better Essays

All Creatures Great and Small was James Herriot’s first book to be published in the United States. In this book, the mature Herriot tells about his youthful self, when he graduated from veterinary school and began working in rural veterinary practice. The narrator like the reader is able to laugh at his naïveté of Herriot, as well as at the people who surround him, including Siegfried Farnon, and his brother, Tristan Farnon. This memoir of James Herriot flashes the simple and laid back lives of the countryside folks. It exhibits their struggles, cultures, etiquette, hardships and relationships. The stories that are depicted in this book is loosely based on Herriot 's life as a young veterinarian in the rough English countryside pre-WWII. There he encounters many different people and animals from dogs and cats to livestock.

From the first day of Herriot 's arrival at Skeldale House, being greeted by a troop of leaping, barking dogs, to the week of tuberculin testing that brings the book to a close, we share the moments of joy, laughter, tears, nerves, confidence, mix-ups, and triumphs involved in his Yorkshire veterinary practice of the 1930s. We meet the eccentric Siegfried Farnon and the carefree Tristan Farnon and many interesting people around the Dales, not to mention those marvellous animals who shall live on just like the human characters. I mean who could ever forget Tricki-Woo and Nugent that made Alf their “uncle” ? Or the Labrador whose wailing and

Get Access