Bertie Wooster loves his Aunt Dahlia, even though she has an ugly habit of leveraging him into some kind of theft. It would be for a good cause, of course, but if you’ve ever read Wooster’s adventures in the world outside his London flat, you’ll know it won’t go well. In this book, however, he is spared such pressure from his beloved Aunt–who employs the best French chef in a hundred miles (no small benefit). Instead, she wants him to knock on doors for one of his old university friends who is running for the House of Commons. That doesn’t prevent him from being accused of being a theft by the Lord of Sidcup, that Baron of Black Shorts, Roderick Spode.
I have been reading the stories of Wooster and Jeeves in relatively the order of their writing, but this is the first one which referred to events I didn’t remember, despite the familiar characters. And the familiar story too. This one didn’t surprise me a few times, and while it was wonderfully fun, it didn’t have a few zany scenes like others I’ve read.
One thing I love is Wodehouse’s style of having a character comment on something that isn’t described in the text. For instance, Jeeves was telling Bertie how something surprising unfolded, then in the same paragraph without pausing for description, he says, “I wouldn’t jerk the wheel so sharply, sir. It could alarm the other drivers.”
Perhaps, you’d have to be there to get the feel of it.
Much Obliged, Jeeves is not a good place to start reading Wodehouse’s terrific stories about Wooster and Jeeves, but it is a recommended part of the series. I enjoyed it.
Hear! Hear! I love Wodehouse’s Wooster books. There are a number of them available from Librivox.org as well. The guy who performs them is very good.
I think it’s best to start with his earlier books. The later books are still better than most writers’ best, but the earlier ones are better.
I recently purchased the entire Jeeves and Wooster British TV series. The Television plots followed the books fairly closely, at least the books I’m familiar with.
While I don’t recommend them as an example for my teens to follow, it does spark some good discussions about the consequences of of certain behavior patterns and the decisions we make. Among other lessons they see that telling lies to get out of embarrassing situations usually results in greater embarrassment and how self centered behavior is rarely in our best interest.
BTW, I should add that I’ve been banned from watching Jeeves and Wooster after the rest of the family has gone to bed due to my loud guffaws waking them too many times.
Ha! I love it. I love those shows. Hugh Laurie can make me laugh just standing still.
They were just brilliant. Wonderful.
Thank you, sir.