GOOSE DINNER

A string of anecdotes about Goose—"the terror of our backyard"—that does ultimately turn into a story of sorts. . . but never does sound as if it were written as an easy-reader: the overall structure is too loose, the sentence-structure is too idiosyncratic, the words are too out-of-the-way ("farrier," "demented")—and there are quite a few contractions. But the situation, if hardly original, is rather nicely handled: after we've heard about all the ways Goose terrorizes everyone but Mother (and heard Dad's threats to turn him into "goose dinner"), raccoon gets' into the hen coop and Goose, no friend of Hen's ordinarily, gallantly fights the raccoon off—assisted, soon, by Dad. Goose is wounded and submissive ("I didn't think that was a good sign"); but by next morning he's out again chasing Hen. "It sure was nice to know everything was back to normal." A little too offhand altogether for the ostensible purpose, unfortunately.