Reviews for The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter: A Memoir

The average rating for The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter: A Memoir based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-19 00:00:00 Mohammed Adam "Your grandfather used to raise gerbils," I tell Aidan... "We had a lot of gerbils at one time." "Like a whole cageful?" Aidan asks doubtfully. "We had thousands more," I tell him as we head home. "Like nine thousand gerbils." "Wow," Aidan says with a sigh. "But why, Mom?" Because Robinson's father was OBSESSED with the creatures, that's why! In the early sixties, Navy commander Donald Robinson ordered eight gerbils from a toy catalog. These cute and fascinating rodents soon became his life's passion...and the rest of his family was swept up into his obsession. Unlike hamsters, I don't eat my babies! He firmly believed that gerbils would be the next "must-have" pet, and entertained hopes for selling them to stores, and perhaps even writing a book about them. This led him to keep a detailed "gerbil journal." Despite his rather whimsical hobby, Robinson was not a particularly likable man. He was both distant and tyrannical, and the whole family dreaded his homecomings. The person who really kept me interested in this book was Holly's mother. Her wit and sarcastic comments about her husband's new pastime really made the book. "Some men have golf, mine has gerbils," she quipped. Donald Robinson did indeed go on to write books and articles about gerbils. He became the "Gerbil Czar," the largest world's largest distributor of gerbils. I'm sorry to say that the majority of these critters were sold for scientific experiments, so PETA members, take note, and just AVOID THIS BOOK, rather than reading it and then complaining about it. Robinson also seems to mellow later in life, and reveals himself to be less of a dictator and more of a lovable, slightly dissatisfied dreamer. He's an interesting guy, but I'd still like to read a book about the mom.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-05 00:00:00 Mario Vela It was hard deciding on whether to give this two or three stars. First off, I would like to say the three-star review would have been for the ease of reading and the storytelling (most memoirs are fascinating as it is cool to know about other peoples' lives). The book is a quick read. However, morally, I couldn't give this too high a rating for the animal abuse and the misleading marketing. First, on the animal abuse: I was annoyed to read about flipping hamsters over to make them scream in terror and the constant picking up of gerbils by their tails and other rodent mistreatment. You may be able to handle cats and dogs a little more roughly, but we're talking small, fragile animals here. I've stumbled on enough hamster torture videos mixed in among the Cute Overload knockoffs to know what an awful segment of our society do to animals. And I've met pet store employees in my vet's office bringing in animals hurt in very bad ways by "innocent" little girls. To promote this kind of behaviour in a book ostensibly about happy gerbils (see the cover), is not very responsible. Second, about the marketing. No where on the cover or the book jacket blurb is there any indication that this is a book about breeding animals for medical laboratories. If I had been told that, the reader could have been prepared. There is no mention of animal experiments, implying instead that the book is about breeding for pet stores (in itself, another awful industry). Instead, the book is called a "warm and rollicking memoir." I doubt many animal lovers (the target market for this book based on the cover), would be too thrilled to read about gerbils being induced to seizures in the name of science by a man with no biology training at all. If the author, as she said a couple of times in the last hundred pages, did feel bad for the animals why did she not elaborate on her misgivings about the industry? The publisher, Harmony Books, is probably to blame for this mismatched marketing.