This one was a lot of fun! I borrowed a P.G. Wodehouse book from a colleague of mine ten or so years ago and really enjoyed it, but I never went back to the author... until this week! A friend of mine introduced me to the "Jeeves and Wooster" TV show as well as "Blandings," and I thought, why not read a little Wodehouse and see what I think?
Well, I picked up a big Wodehouse collection on Amazon, something like 4000 pages, and it turns out it only contains one of the like 15 Jeeves books and a collection of Jeeves short stories. Something about the licensing of Wodehouse's work puts his stuff all over the place.
Oh, well.
The book I read for this review is Right Ho, Jeeves, which is apparently the second Jeeves novel. This one was released in 1934, which is the same year the first Nero Wolfe book was published. Odd coincidence, but auspicious.
This book, oddly enough, was adapted in two episodes of the "Jeeves and Wooster" TV show, but not the episode actually titled "Right Ho, Jeeves." Instead, YouTube says the two episodes in question are called "The Hunger Strike" and "Will Anatole Return to Brinkley Court?" You can watch them for a low-investment taste of the Jeeves and Wooster spirit.
I got at least two solid laugh-out-loud moments from the book, and an assortment of decent chuckles. This, even though I had already seen "The Hunger Strike" and knew roughly half of what was going to happen in the book.
It's written in a chatty, approachable style from the first-person perspective of Bertie Wooster. In the TV show, Bertie is portrayed a little dumber than in the book, where he may fail to comprehend the overlaps of his plans, but he isn't unintelligent and hasn't a malicious bone in his body.
His narration is full of humorous little tics, like random abbreviations, comical repetition, semi-mis-matched aphorism, and goofy polite euphemism.
Jeeves, the intelligent butler, has a quick wit, an unflappable style, and subtle but complex plans.
The rest of the cast is full of affable but silly caricatures of the English upper-crust. Funny names like "Augustus Fink-Nottle" abound.
It's a fun story full of ups and downs, twists and untwists, and excellent gags. One of the common formulas in the book is Action, Hidden Action, Reaction, Conclusion, which is used to excellent comedic effect several times. What exactly the Hidden Action entails is often quite fun and a little silly but ultimately believable.
Bertie's voice is full of slightly dated English patois but it's still easy and engaging to read. A bally good show. Or... book, in this case.
No comments:
Post a Comment