Customer Reviews

All Things Herriot: James Herriot and His Peaceable Kingdom

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this book, sight-unseen, on the name alone. I was very disappointed to find that it read like a college term paper where the student has to fill up a given amount of space and spends most of there time stating the obvious. I feel this book just capitilizes on the Herriot name (a little irreverently, I might add) and nothing more.

The author of this ' book ' is a part-time professor of English. You would think with this in mind that he might have bothered to get his facts correct. James Herriot was a wonderful man, and deserved his story to be told with accuracy. The author of this book should be ashamed. Don't waste your money, there are so many better things to read.

This book can not be considered non-fiction. The book is full of inaccuracies. So many in fact that the book is useless as a biography of Alf Wight aka James Herriot. Sternlicht shows Wight graduating college in 1937 but in another part of the book the date is listed as 1938. The correct date is 1939. The author also claims that Wight was in the RAF from 1943-1945 when it was actually 1941-1943. He even has the name of his son wrong listing it as Nicholas James when it's James Alexander. There are many more inaccuracies in this book which makes it wise to avoid reading it.

Anyone who is interested in reading about the real life of Alf Wight, aka James Herriot, should avoid this book. It is full of major factual inaccuracies, all of which stem from the author's lack of research. Sternlicht makes the fundamental mistake of assuming that the Herriot books are accurate autobiography, which they are not - Alf Wight deliberately fictionalised many aspects of his life in order to try and preserve his anonymity as much as possible.

Read this book if you want to believe in the fictional "James Herriot universe", but if you want to read an accurate, factual account of the life of the real Alf Wight, read The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by Jim Wight.

Although I love "A Creatures great and Small" I found this book very boring and uninteresting. Could not get into this book.

All Things Herriot: James Herriot and His Peaceable Kingdom is just what its title implies: a comprehensive overview of all of the works of James Herriot (pen name of James Alfred Wight),skillfully interwoven with a biography of the famous veterinarian/writer. The book's author, Sanford Sternlicht, is a professor of English at Syracuse University and was for a time a Visiting Fellow at York University; his perspective on Herriot and on his beloved Yorkshire is informed and fine-tuned, and the tone of All Things Herriot is on the whole warm and appreciative. Sternlicht examines all of Herriot's major works, as well as his compilations and juvenile publications. He points out the unifying themes in all these works in a very clear and direct way -- the recurrent archetypal stories of birth, life, and death (which, as archetypes, will forever have universal appeal and will stand up well to repeated readings), and Herriot's message that suffering (animal and human) is "...the great, perennial challenge to all our humanity. Our response to suffering is ultimately how, as societies and individuals, we are to be judged." (All Things Herriot, p.76) Other facets of Herriot's appeal, which Sternlicht brings to the fore so well, include his beautifully-drawn and intricate portraits of the Yorkshire people, and of course, the animals, as well as Herriot's seemingly limitless store of heart-wrenching, gorgeous descriptions of the wild beauty of Yorkshire itself. This critical/literary biography never talks down to the reader, and more than once I pulled out my trusty dictionary to ascertain the full meaning of a passage -- but I enjoy learning new things and I'm sure that most readers will find this a stimulating read! Sternlicht's style is direct and immediate and colorful (not unlike Herriot's!), and I found it a joy to read. It made me want to re-read all the Herriot books, armed as I am with so much new understanding of Herriot and his world. This is a must for all Herriot fans and for those who have yet to discover his work. It is a fascinating and thorough portrait of not only a caring healer, a professional in his field, but (amazingly) a very gifted storyteller as well.

I would just like to say that I have been a fan of the great James Herriot and his writings for many years. His books have transported me to places of green pastures and bittersweet memories of the English countryside and the animals that lived there. This book, "All Things Herriot: James Herriot and His Peaceable Kingdom" has captured the reality behind the man who had brought us down those craggy pathways to the sweet, heartwrentching stories of our animal friends. Thank you for this book and for helping us to better know the man behind it all.