"I can't even remember where I found it, but the price on the upper right corner says I only paid a dollar for it. It's been sitting on my shelf for a couple years now, tempting me. I was both strongly attracted to its subject matter but also quite nervous about its dangers. It's the story of a gamekeeper on a Duke's lands in Northern England in the '70s. I was quite excited about reading about the nature of the work, the setting and the social relations. My fears were that it would either be masochistically self-pitying throughout like some British works from that period or that it would have some terrible turn of events, such as a brutal and forced change of lifestyle for the worse for the protagonist or some terrible cruelty to animals. I'm sensitive about these things and generally won't read books where I know that the plot hinges on those elements. To me, it is a form of pornography for certain readers who get off on feeling others' pain. I have nothing against pornography, it's just my kind of literary pornography involves capable men dealing efficiently with difficult situations."