Short, anecdotal material that animal-lovers can dip into with relish.
Buoyant, tenderhearted stories of a rural veterinarian’s days and nights on the job.
Sharp was a “city mouse,” as he says, with a small-animal practice when he purchased a country practice in Hillsboro, Ohio, a place where large animals would be a staple. So it is understandable that he encountered plenty of hairy and comical situations as he learned the ropes. Here, in 38 vignettes, all written with an easy hand (one can imagine him as a rather soothing soul, as comforting as an old pair of slippers) and without any straining at the lead, Sharp describes with equal poise the countryside around him—an atmospheric blend of stormy nights, dogwoods and redbuds, coffee cake and milk, farms tucked away in hollows—and the practice it demands: horse work, hog work, bull work, animals big enough to kill you. There are dicey situations, like the C-section he must administer on a cow, and there are faintly disgusting ones, like the decomposing fetus he extracts from another cow, a festering mass he must saw to pieces in utero, known as a bubbler in vet vernacular. There is a chauffeur-delivered cat, and there is the age-old conundrum, worthy of being a koan: “What do you do with a trapped skunk?” Sharp liberates a swan with its feet frozen into the ice, and he scratches his head in wonder at some of his clients: “I was still trying to understand the thinking process that tells you: Go ahead, stand behind a half-ton horse wearing steel shoes and cut his testicles off with a kitchen knife.” He doesn’t avoid the rare acts of cruelty he witnesses, but his work is much more likely to demonstrate an animal’s ability to provoke a human’s capacity for caring and affection.
Short, anecdotal material that animal-lovers can dip into with relish.Pub Date: May 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-7867-1524-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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