Originally published as three separate volumesDonkey's Years, Dog Days, and The Whole HogA Bestiaryrelates the life and times of one of Ireland's greatest contemporarywriters. As in his fiction, Higgins's writing exquisitely capturessights, smells, and emotions, detailing his life from childhood inCounty Kildare before his family's economic decline, to his mother'sslow, agonizing death; from his travels in England and South Africa, tohis two years spent living with a schoolmistress after the end of hisfirst marriage. In writing his memoirs Higgins exposes the sources for many of his best novels, from Scenes from a Receding Past to Langrishe, Go Down, giving the reader a rare look into the "story behind the story." But A Bestiaryis more than a factual exposethis collection of memoirs is constructedin a novelistic way, creating a work of literary art out of a life.