P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975)

Although this is in many ways a typical Wodehouse novel, I didn’t find it particularly funny. The plot was humorous but not hilarious. It made me smile at times but not laugh, and I didn’t smile often.

The story hangs together well enough, and the characters are vivid, but the plot isn’t gripping, and nor are the characters Wodehouse’s best creations.

It’s a strange one to sum up, really. I liked it but was disappointed that it lacked the comedy associated with this talented author.… (mais)

Classic Wodehouse. While most Wodehouse characters bumble about, a few are the exact opposite -- rarely if ever at a loss for what to do. Jeeves is the best known of these, but Uncle Fred is right up there. A congenial uncle, up for adventure to the dismay of his nephew Pongo, with a con man's heart, but never for personal monetary gain. While the comical metaphors and observations that are a Wodehouse trademark are amply present, to me what stands out is the complexity of the plot machinations and the speed with which the novel races through them. My head hurt trying to keep track of the first four or so chapters, and I think the same may have been true for Wodehouse. Characters such as Howard, Lord Emsworth, and Polly, introduced early in the novel, and critical links in several causal chains, have basically left the stage by the two-thirds point. As a result, the concluding chapters are clear and resolved, but I was left with many "but what about...?"

Recommended but not as a first Wodehouse book.… (mais)

(Because the books in this series have been republished so many times and I'm reading mismatched editions, I'm adding my own generic but matching fan art covers to my reviews. Yay!)

Well. Here I've finished what's technically Book Two of this series, with some events that predate certain other events I read about in Book Three. But Book Three has at least one story that predates them all, so there's that. Plus, given the episodic nature of most of the stories, the nonchronological order I chose for introducing myself to Jeeves and Wooster doesn't really matter.

While Books One and Three are short story collections, this second book is a novel—pretty much. Still with a fairly episodic feel as an offbeat variety of ingredients get tossed into the salad bowl slipping and sliding on down the counter. But Bingo's romantic misadventures remain quite the theme through most of it. So there's that.

Aside from a couple of dated details/moments that got a mental head-shake from me, I enjoyed this comedy salad. Now on my third book of this author's early work, I could tell exactly how a few matters in this novel would play out before they did. But that didn't lessen the pleasure of finding out just how the wacky rest of it would go down.

Now! I certainly plan on reading more of the ninety-plus books this author wrote—probably after I indulge my curiosity with a couple of detours to some other folks' works based on Jeeves and Wooster. Maybe the old British television series first?… (mais)

In his latest novel "Cinema", German star author Daniel Kehlmann lets an English movie critic by the name of Rupert Wooster appear. As the only international attendee of a movie premiere in Salzburg in 1942 - right in the middle of World War II - Wooster engages in an English conversation that is a wonderful mix of eloquence and humour on the Wooster side, and misunderstandings due to broken English on the German guests' side. As this was one of the funniest literary chapters I've read in a long time, I wondered whether there was a real counterpart to Rupert Wooster. And of course there was! Even though I knew nothing about P. G. Wodehouse and his humouristic Wooster-Jeeves novels (I am German and P. G. Wodehouse isn't exactly famous among German readers in the 2020's), it wasn't very difficult to find out about Wodehouse's internment in Berlin and about Kehlmanns's ingenious idea to let Wodehouse appear as a relative of one of his main protagonists Bertie Wooster, only to have a conversation that is very much like a conversation in a Wodehouse novel.
Curious to find out more about Wodehouse and his literature, I decided to read "Joy in the morning", the book that made it into a top-100 list of English novels in the Guardian. This proved to be an excellent choice. Although I must admit that Wodehouse is a bit of a vocabulary and verbal phrase challenge to a non-native speaker, it certainly is also great joy to read. While I am not sure whether this book is an appropriate trainer for everyday conversation, I think it is the best compilation of English humour based on play on words that I have ever read. The plot reminds of a theatre comedy, as it develops around conversations among people that all know each other and have clear roles assigned to them. In the end, butler Jeeves solves it all. I am very thankful to Daniel Kehlmann for having directed my attention to P. G. Wodehouse. Indeed, it is "Joy in the morning" that Wodehouse began before and finished shortly after his internment in Nazi Germany. This book is the perfect link to Kehlmann's tribute to P. G. Wodhouse's humour in "Cinema", and it is a wonderful "getting to know the original Wodehouse humour" experience.… (mais)