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All Things Wise and Wonderful
by James Herriot
This is the third James Herriot book, at
least in the form that his work has been
packaged for the U.S. market. Like its two
predecessors, All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Bright and Beautiful, this book originally appeared as two shorter
volumes in Britain. U.S. publishers simply
prefer to sell heftier books, because they
believe that their customers demand them.
In a change of pace from the
previous two
books, Herriot organizes this
work around
flashbacks. He recounts incidents
from his
(often humorous) period of service
in the
Royal Air Force during World
War II, then
conjures up memories of his prior
life as
a vet. Or, at least that’s how
he presents
them.
While Herriot insisted that all
his stories
were drawn from real incidents,
he did take
some literary license with details,
including
chronology. Thus, some of the
stories placed
by his books in the 1930s and
1940s, for
instance, actually were based
on events from
much later. In addition to pseudonyms
(both
for people and places), he also
employs composite
characters (and places).
This book is every bit as memorable
as the
prior three. |
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