Herriot never disappoints. If I had to choose one of his books that is the weakest, it would be this one. The stories and characters are not quite as memorable as in his other books, and there are some rather off-topic chapters (more about that in a bit). But even if it is the weakest of the five, it is still a touching, engaging, funny, and perceptive book.

It picks up right where All Things Wise and Wonderful left off, with Herriot coming home from the RAF. It chronicles life post-war, and the picking up of dropped threads. It jumps a bit, and several years seem to vanish without a trace. Suddenly, Siegfried and Tristan are both married and moved out of Skeldale House. As with his other books, the chronology bounces around, but that never really bothered me (except that I'd love to hear more about how/when/to whom Siegfried and Tristan got married).

This book chronicles his children, Jim and Rosie, as young children, and includes a story about a neglected boy and his dog that made me want to move to the country and adopt a bunch of kids and give each of them a rescued puppy. Herriot's gifted that way.

The chapters I felt were off-topic were where he intersperses entries from his diaries from his trips to Russia and Istanbul. They were very clearly more lightly edited and less polished than the rest of his work. They also didn't seem terribly germane. They were not intriguing or well-written enough to help me overcome my feeling of "Yeah, yeah, but can we get back to Darrowby already?" That being said, even these chapters are awful, or bad, or anything. They just made me read fast to get back to what I felt was the meat of the book: his life as a vet in Yorkshire.