"A Pelican at Blandings" by P G Wodehouse

Another Blandings novel. Once more Galahad, the younger brother of Lord Emsworth, must reunite  sundered lovers. Once more the antagonists are Lady Constance and the truly awful Alaric, Duke of Dunstable. Once more there are imposters. And if no-one has any plans to kidnap the Empress of Blandings, there are plans afoot to steal a painting of a nude lady that looks a bit like the fat pig herself.

So the plot and the characters are the same as all the other Blandings novels. Never mind! What makes Wodehouse adorable is the way he twists our common language into absurdity:

• "A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of experiencing at least that number of very hard winters." (6.1)
• "Something had told Lord Emsworth that this interview might prove to be a difficult one, and it was plain to him that something had known what it was talking about." (7.3)
• "'I wouldn't marry him if he were the last man on earth.' 'Well, he isn't, so the question does not arise.'" (9.2)

One of the other joys of this book is the way he teases his fellow authors:

• "A stylist like Gustave Flaubert, with his flair for the mot juste, would have described her as being as mad as a wet hen." (8.1)
• "Thomas Hardy would have seen in the whole affair one more of life's little ironies and on having it drawn to his attention would have got twenty thousand words of a novel out of it." (10.2)
• "Like all authors, she knew that her output was above criticism." (13.1)

And one of the characters is called Abercrombie Fitch!

Selected quotes:

• "She belonged to the school of thought that holds that a nice glass of hot milk, while not baffling the death angel altogether, can at least postpone the inevitable." (6.1)
• "He switched on the torch. When he did so, he instantly became the centre of attraction to a rowdy mob of those gnats, moths and beetles which collect in gangs and stay up late in the rural districts." (7.2)
• "A stare that would have aroused the respectful envy of a basilisk." (8.1)

Other P G Wodehouse novels reviewed in this blog may be found here.

August 2022; 249 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Service with a smile" by P G Wodehouse

 Another Blandings novel and yet again there is a plot to steal the Empress of Blandings, the prize pig about which Lord Emsworth is obsessed. Once again there is a pair of cross-matched lovers and once again there is an imposter ("Blandings Castle had imposters the way other houses had mice"; 6.3). Wodehouse recycles his plots even more than he recycles his lines.

But you don't read these books for the farce. You read them for the moments when the prose turns into liquid jewellery.

So here are some of those selected quotes:

• "the large brown eyes ... had something in them of the sadness one sees in those of a dachshund which, coming to the dinner table to get its ten per cent, is refused a cut off the joint." (1.1) PGW doesn't just say 'she had the eyes of a dachshund but he elaborates; that's his secret.
• "South Kensington? Where sin stalks naked through the daek alleys and only might is right." (2.1) PGW likes exaggeration and likes to juxtapose it with the least likely comparison.
• "He had a face that would stop a clock." (2.1)
• "He, too, had lived in Arcady." (2.1) PGW isn't afraid of making oblique obscure cultural references and just leaving it at that, for some readers to appreciate, and others, presumably, to pass by.
• "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned, and very few like a woman who feels she has been tricked into entertaining at her home a curate at the thought of whom she has been shuddering for weeks." (5.2) PGW enjoys taking metaphors literally and stretching them.
• "She could, he estimated, be counted on for at least ten thousand words of rebuke and recrimination, administered in daily instalments over the years." (6.1)
• "The ideal person with whom to plot is the furtive. shifty-eyed man who stifled his conscience at the age of six and would not recognize a scruple if you served it up to him on an individual blue plate with bearnaise sauce." (7.2) PGW keeps the elaboration going by adding detail after detail.

July 2022; 224 pages

Here you can find a link to other P G Wodehouse books reviewed in this blog 

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Full Moon" by P G Wodehouse

 Another Blandings story: more young lovers and old fools (one might almost think he drew his inspiration from the Commedia dell'Arte), more indomitable aunts and, of course, more imposters. The plot, with its twists and highly improbable turns, is that of a classic farce. The silliness is rescued by its very over-the-top unlikelihood and by the sheer beauty of the comedic writing.

Selected quotes:

• "He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat." (1.1)
• "A slow, pleasant voice, like clotted cream made audible." (1.3)
• "Lord Emsworth ... always took a little time to collect his hands and feet when about to potter from a given spot." (8.2)
• "the Aunt, the whole Aunt, and nothing but the Aunt." (9.1)

Other P G Wodehouse books reviewed on this blog may be found here.

May 2022; 261 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Uncle Fred in the Springtime" by P G Wodehouse

 A Blandings novel. As usual, Blandings Castle, the seat of the Earl of Emsworth, is infested with imposters, on this occasion the Earl of Ickenham who is pretending to be a psychiatrist for reasons which escaped me. As usual there is a plot to steal Emsworth's adored prize-winning sow, the Empress of Blandings. As usual chaos ensues. 

The characters may be thin (and too many - I lost count of who was who and why) and the plot over-convoluted. The joy of Wodehouse lies in the language.

Selected quotes:

• "Like all English springs, the one which had just come to London seemed totally unable to make up its fat-headed mind whether it was supposed to be that ethereal mildness of which the poet sings or something suitable for ski-ers left over from the winter." (Ch 1)
• "Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying: 'Don't look now, but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth.'" (Ch 1)
• "She was the sweetest thing that had ever replied 'Yes' to a clergyman's 'Wilt thou'?" (Ch 3)
• "'Who was the chap who was such a devil with the other sex? ... Donald something.' 'Donald Duck?' 'Don Juan'." (Ch 5)
• "You've got the stuff my boy. It's the penalty you pay for having an ancestress who couldn't say No to Charles the Second." (Ch 5)
• "Poets, as a class, are business men. Shakespeare describes the poet's eye as rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, but in practice you will find that one corner of that eye is generally glued on the royalty returns." (Ch 13)
• "He sat down heavily. And some rough indication of his frame of mind may be gathered from the fact that he forgot to pull the knees of his trousers up." (Ch 18)

Delightful nonsense. April 2022

Other books by P G Wodehouse reviewed in this blog can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Leave it to Psmith" by P G Wodehouse

 The fourth and last of the Psmith books and the second of the Blandings Castle series. As usual, Blandings Castle, the stately home of the vague Earl of Emsworth, is infested with imposters, including Psmith who is pretending to be Canadian poet Ralston McTodd, in order to stay at the Castle to have an opportunity of stealing the necklace of Lady Constance, sister of Lord Emsworth, at the behest of her husband as relayed through Lord Emsworth's son Freddy Threepwood. Add to this mix at least one other imposter and at least three other potential jewel thieves, not to mention the suspicions of Lord Emsworth's secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and we have the ingredients for a classic farce.

The plot is ingenious, if ridiculous; the characters are unfailingly innocent (even the crooks) and eccentric. But the joy of the novel is the language. Psmith, as in his previous books, rabbits on endlessly about very little. 

The book being written in 1926, it has the ability for the characters to own revolvers and Freddy frequently quotes the caption cards from the silent movies he watches. There are other topical references:

• "The sun, taken in as usual by the never-failing practical joke of the Daylight Saving Act, had only just set." (7.3)

PGW does recycle material he has used in previous books, for example:

• "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these. 'it might have been'." (3.1) In Mike, chapter 33, Psmith is also speaking thus: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen,” said he, “the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’" (C 33)
• He tells the story of a traveller who, falling asleep over an acorn, wakes up to find himself in the topost branches of a tree and decides "I cannot ... adapt circumstance to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances." I(11.3) n Mike chapter 22, Psmith says: “if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances." 

I think the secret of PGW is that he takes things to extremes. There is never just one imposter, nor is there a single jewel thief. And when he employs a common phrase, he embellishes and ornaments it. For example:

• A character doesn't just 'stiffen', she isn't 'petrified' or 'turned to stone':  "The name Jackson had apparently turned her to marble. It was like the Pygmalion and Galatea business working the wrong way round. She was presumably breathing, but there was no sign of it." (1.2)
• "That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door." (2.1)
• "Miss Clarkson, unless firmly checked, would pirouette round and round the point for minutes without ever touching it." (2.2)
• "It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone - if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck." (10.1)

Selected quotes:

• "These gatherings of old girls'-school chums are not the sort of function your man of affairs wants to get lugged into. ... the conversation would have dealt exclusively with reminiscences of the dear old school, of tales of surreptitious cocoa-drinking in the dormitories and what the deportment mistress said when Angela was found chewing tobacco in the shrubbery." (2.1)
• "Those sudden showers which are such a delightfully piquant feature of the English summer." (3.1)
• "The sun was shining again in that half blustering, half apologetic manner which it affects on its reappearance after a summer shower." (3.1)
• "These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty." (6.2)
• "Always pop across streets. It is the secret of a happy and successful life." (6.5)
• "It was Psmith's guiding rule in life always to avoid explanations." (6.5)
• "In these modern days when poets are so plentiful ... it is almost impossible to fling a brick in any public place without damaging some stern younger singer." (6.5)
• "She was the sort of woman who tells a man who is propping his eyes open with his fingers and endeavouring to correct a headache with strong tea, that she was up at six watching the dew fade off the grass, and didn't he think that those wisps of morning mist were the elves' bridal-veils." (7.3)
• "The fact that he possessed a brain like a buzzsaw ... renedered the Efficient Baxter a bad sleeper." (11. 2)
• "The Hon. Freddie belonged to that unfortunate type of humanity which automatically gets blamed for everything in moments of stress." (13.2)
• "You never knew with rats. They pretended not to be there just to lure you on, and then came out and whizzed about your ankles." (13.2)

January 2022; 328 pages

Earlier books about Psmith:

• Mike
• Psmith in the City
• Psmith, Journalist

Earlier books about Blandings Castle

• Something Fresh

Other books by P G Wodehouse can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Mating Season" by P G Wodehouse

Bertie Wooster has to pretend to be Gussie Fink-Nottle and Gussie has to pretend to be Bertie to resolve the broken engagements of:

• Hollywood film starlet and Bertie's childhood friend Corky and Esmond Haddock, a man who cannot stand up to his five disapproving aunts;
• Corky's brother Catsmeat who loves Esmond's niece Gertrude;
• Gussie's betrothed Madeleine Bassett who, if Gussie chucks her in favour of his grwoing infatuation with Corky who is playing hard to get with Esmond, will turn her attention to Bertie whom, she thinks, loves her;
• Village policeman PC Dodds, sworn enemy to Corky since he had locked up her dog,  and parlourmaid Queenie who is daughter to Jeeves' uncle Silversmith.

Naturally, the paths of true love are beautifully entangled.

A classic Jeeves and Wooster farce written in Wodehouse's perfect prose including the lines:

• "dragons are one thing, and aunts are another"
• "it was plain at a glance that the passage of time had done nothing to gruntle him"
• "I wouldn't have believed ... that anybody ... could be such an authority on the film world as is Mrs Clara Wellbeloved. She knows much more about it than I do, and I'll have been moving in celluloid circles [love that image!] two years come Lammas Eve [love the archaism]. She knows exactly how many times everybody's been divorced and why, how much every picture for the last twenty years has grossed, and how many Warner brothers there are. She even knows how many times Artie Shaw has been married, which I'll bet he couldn't tell you himself. She asked if I had ever married Artie Shaw, and when I said No, seemed to think I was pulling her leg or must have done it without noticing. I tried to explain that when a girl goes to Hollywood she doesn't have to marry Artie Shaw, it's optional, but I don't think I convinced her."
• "in vino what's-the-word"
• "I told her more. In fact I told her all. When I had finished, she laughed like a hyena and also, for girls never make sense, let fall a pearly tear or two."
• "I don't know anything more sickening than being baffled by an unforeseen stymie at the eleventh hour"
• "I made for it like a man on a walking tour diving into a village pub two minutes before closing time."

"A tall, drooping man, looking as if he had been stuffed in a hurry by an incompetent taxidermist."

Beautiful stuff by the man who also wrote the equally brilliant Aunts Aren't Gentlemen.

Other books by P G Wodehouse reviewed in this blog can be found here.

October 2016; 272 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Aunts aren't gentlemen" by P.G.Wodehouse

Bertie Wooster has spots on his chest and his doctor advises him to go down to the country for peace and quiet and fresh air and exercise. But at the cottage organised by his Aunt Dahlia he becomes embroiled in trying to fix a horse race by stealing a cat whilst simultaneously trying not to get married to an ex-fiancee who wants to improve him. In the end it takes his man Jeeves to sort out the mess.

Written as last as 1974 yet presumably set in that innocent inter-war period when it still mattered if you had been to Eton, this is classic Wodehouse. The joy is that it is written in the voice of Wooster, chivalrous but hapless man about town, who dilettantes about with foreign expressions and snatches of poetry but has never heard of Tolstoy. Time and again Wodehouse raises a chuckle by transforming the English language.

Cliches are renewed, often by the simple expedient of Wooster applying abbreviations, as when he explains how Porter "earned the daily b"; "so far ... so g".

He also renews cliches by simply replacing words so that 'I shuddered from head to toe' becomes "I shuddered from hair-do to shoe-sole".

He uses English history to illustrate concepts. When trying to make the point that red hair is associated with high blood pressure he says: "The first Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and look what she did to Mary Queen of Scots."

On the other hand he is sometimes hilariously ignorant. When asked if he has read 'Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son' he reflects "well, of course I hadn't. Bertam Wooster does not read other people's letters. If I were employed in the Post Office, I wouldn't even read the postcards."

He exaggerates images. A dour doctor has a face which resembles "a frog which has been looking on the dark side since it was a slip of a tadpole"; if Aunt Dahlia "ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know." "He couldn't have been more emotional if he had been a big shot in the Foreign Office and I a heavily veiled woman diffusing a strange exotic scent whom he had caught getting away with the Naval Treaty"; "Talk of drawing his fangs. His dentist will have to fit him with a completely new set"; "Cook in his present frame of mind wouldn't recognise reason if you served it up to him in an individual plate with watercress round it".

He pretends not to know things. The blood pressure sphygmomanometer becomes "that rubber thing around my biceps"; "I wasn't a modern Casa something. Not Casabianca. That was the chap who stood on the burning deck. Casanova. I knew I'd get it.".

He interrupts the narrative to ask questions directly of the reader: "And with no further ado - or is it to-do? - I never can remember".

He can mix metaphors with aplomb: "What asses horses are"; "I am a good mixer who is always glad to shake hands with new faces".

He becomes literal with metaphor. ""She has been known to ask me if I have a home of my own and, if I have. why the hell I don't stay in it".

He is also literal with the English language: "there happened at the moment to be no passers-by but if any passers had been by ..."

These are just a few examples. The book is stuffed as full of these things as a goose whose liver is destined for foie gras. When you add in the elements of a classic farce and some utterly preposterous characters, Wodehouse is pure, escapist, comic gold.

Other books by P G Wodehouse reviewed in this blog can be found here.

August 2016; 184 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera" by Simon Brett

This is a murder mystery in an extravagantly Wodehousian style.

Blotto, utterly dim second son of the Duke of Tawcester ("though Blotto had for some years been manfully working his way through The Hand of Fu Manchu, literature had never played a major part in his life") and his brainy sister Twinks investigate the theft of two of their family portraits. Forget the story. Enjoy the humour.

They talk in outrageous flapper slang. Exclamations include Toad-in-the-Hole, Broken biscuits and Larksissiums. If you are glum you are said to have lumps in your custard. And the thieves are four-faced filchers, or stenchers. Blotto persistently misunderstands everything. When told that some people have pictures on their walls that are reproductions he thinks these must be pictures of people reproducing. When a French painter exclaims "Salaud!" he assumes this is French for "Allo" so he replies "Hello" (this is a repeated gag). When Twinks is flattered that someone has written her a poem, she is his muse, Blotto thinks she is a stable block.

The names are delightful. The two French painters who compete to do works of triangulisme and how sick they are of consumption are called Blocque and Tacquel. The two American writers who compete in drinking are called Chuck Waggen and Scott Frea. Even the minor characters are brilliant. Every French waiter discusses philosophy. There is a silent film star of breath-taking stupidity who is surprised that her lips are red when they are always black in the movies and reasons that is because you always see movies in darkened rooms. (She is also in France to find her ancestors even though her French name is only a stage name and she is actually the daughter of American hog farmers.) English writer Westomoreland Hubely attempts a gay seduction of Blotto but Blotto has no idea what he is talking about.

Brilliantly funny. Who cares about the plot.

By the prolific author of the Fethering mysteries including The Corpse on the Court and Blood at the Bookies and Bones under the Beach Hut and the Charles Paris theatrical whodunnits such as A Decent Interval. 

January 2015; 200 pages