All Things Bright and Beautiful, Vol. 1 Book

I am fully aware that I am about to commit a type of blasphemy, but I was born with truth serum in my veins, and I just can't be stopped.

I am about to tell you, as respectfully as possible, why this book didn't work for me, and I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings in doing so (I had multiple reviewers here on Goodreads who both scolded me and stopped reading my reviews after I gave Eleanor Oliphant 2 stars, so don't kid yourself into thinking that doesn't happen on here).

This is a beloved book. A beloved book, and almost every literate person over the age of 55 has either read this, or its predecessor, All Creatures Great and Small.

In fact, almost every veterinarian I've ever met will cite this book, or Herriot's first book (or more likely all of Herriot's books) as their original inspiration to pursue the veterinary sciences.

I can think of MANY readers of my acquaintance, especially my friends in the horse world, who would be riveted by this read.

I just wasn't one of them.

My first problem, which hit me right in the face, almost as soon as I started reading, was Herriot's excessive use of dialect. I can grasp that it was meant to be funny, and it was meant to give the reader the "feel of the people," but it was so dense, I couldn't even grasp the meaning of any of it, and I quickly fell into the habit of just flat-out skipping over it.

And, as to the "feel of the people. . ." Here comes my next problem.

So, I'm slogging through this, enjoying some of it, skipping some of it, and I realize I'm still scratching my head over where Mr. Herriot practiced medicine. He mentions "here in Scotland" then "here in Yorkshire" and "here in England." Now, I'm not British, and I've never traveled to the U.K., and I understand that these areas are rather close together, but I still don't understand the vagaries. I flipped over the book to read that the back cover describes Mr. Herriot as journeying through the "remote hillside farms and valley towns of the Yorkshire Dales."

The Yorkshire Dales? Okay. I Googled a map of the U.K., and I could see the Yorkshire Dales, but why does he make it so unclear? I then Googled a map of his actual town of "Darrowby," to figure out for once and all where he lived and discovered the following:

Darrowby is a fictional village in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, which was used by James Herriot as the setting for his surgery in his book It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet.

Wait. What?? A fictional town?

I then Googled James Herriot and learned that his real name was James Wight, and that his wife's name was actually Joan (not Helen as it is in the book).

People, can you understand how ANNOYING this is to me?

This book is clearly selling itself as an "autobiographical memoir." In fact, it doesn't even come with the disclaimer that This book is a work of fiction on the copyright page.
So, DOES "Mr. Herriot" have extraordinarily small hands for a vet? And, is his real wife, Joan, a big girl like his fictional wife, Helen?? (Can't be true; his actual wife would have filed for divorce over how many times he describes her as "big" in this book).

Are these even real situations that happened in a real town somewhere, written under false names?

And, my best question yet. . . who wrote this book?

According to my Google search, James Wight, aka James Herriot, is "best known for these semi-autobiographical works, beginning with If Only They Could Talk, which spawned a series of movies and television series."

But this feels like ghost writer territory to me.

For those of you who have been in on this "big secret," my reaction probably seems overly sensitive to you. I know that all of us, as writers, are occasional thieves. We sometimes steal from the rich (characters), to give to the poor (characters), but I think all writers have an obligation to have integrity in their intentions. You are either setting out to write about people you know and tell the truth, or you are creating a fictional world that stems from your own imagination.

I can't help it; I feel ripped off. Duped. I thought I was reading an autobiographical account of a country veterinarian.

Instead, I feel like I did when the writers of the tv show Dallas blew off an entire bad season by explaining that everything that happened was taken back. Turns out it wasn't real; it was just a dream.

I don't even understand where they shelve these books at the libraries and bookstores.