All Things Bright and Beautiful is James Herriot's memoir of his years a country vet in 1930s Yorkshire. His style reminds me very much of both the Gilbreths and Edmund Love, so regular readers of this blog will know that I loved it.
Herriot leads his readers on a gentle stroll through the hills and dales, jovially recalling his more memorable patients and not a few of their two-legged owners. He creates a sense of time and place, so that the reader is quite certain that Herriot's adventures could only have happened when and where they did. Many are sweet, some are laugh-out-loud funny, and all are tinged with a heavy dose of nostalgia.
In addition to giving readers a glimpse of the country vets' daily life, Herriot also deftly educates the reader about veterinary medicine, and in particular how far the field had advanced, even at the time of his writing (early 1970s). His explanations of various ailments are thorough, without being overly technical. I learned more about brucellosis, for example, than I ever thought to knew, but didn't realize until I finished reading the book how much Herriot had actually taught me about animal husbandry. He is clearly awed by his work, not in the self-important sense, but in the sense that man has the ability, through science, to alleviate (or prevent) the suffering of so many animals.
All Things Bright and Beautiful is actually the second book in a trilogy. I've gone about it all wrong, reading the middle first, but I am very much looking forward to cracking the cover on All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Wise and Wonderful.
Four stars.
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