Jan 25, 2017 07:11 PM
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Marching along the dangerous roads trodden before,
Will Bertie Wooster be engaged to Florence once more?
What fresh hell awaits in this beautiful but dreaded country place is for us to behold,
A nautical business contract and a cousin’s love story are the other plots that unfold!
P.G. Wodehouse: He has always been my favorite author not only because I love humor(he has been the best humorist to ever put words on paper), but also since his language is so rich that the vocabulary increases in a fun way! Jeeves and Wooster stories are my favorites, where Bertie Wooster is a well-to-do but good-for-nothing bloke who relies on his inherited fortune for livelihood. Jeeves is his suave, erudite and well-meaningly shrewd butler. We, as readers, can bask in the light of their metaphors, drink the merriment of the character descriptions and live their apprehensions and sticky situations too!
Plot:
Steeple Bumpleigh is a place to which one couldn’t drag Bertie Wooster to even with a thousand horses. This is because of his ex-fiance Florence Cray and dreaded aunt Agatha who live there. But fate has this uncanny way of taking him to the places he desires least! To help effect the extremely confidential meeting of two nautical business tycoons Uncle Percy and J. Chichester Clam, Bertie packs his bags to go to the ghastly place.
His troubles start as soon as he sets foot. For starters, his step-nephew Edwin accidentally sets fire to the house in which Bertie is supposed to live and the prospective venue of the hush-hush meeting! Edwin is a brat who is supposed to perform acts of ‘kindness’ every week and record them as part of his school curriculum. His supposed acts of kindness somehow become threats to the human race and cause wrecks to the human property!
Florence Craye, mistaking Bertie’s intentions of coming to her town, assumes that he is still pining for marrying her. Her current fiancé D. Cheezewright, who has a face ‘like a pumpkin’ and a body ‘like a slab of beef’ is outraged at Bertie’s presence. To make matters worse, Bertie discovers that Cheezewright is now a policeman and one who would like nothing better than to shove Bertie into the prison on any flimsy excuse.
Bertie is entrusted with one more task of mollifying Uncle Percy and convincing him to accept the engagement of Bertie’s cousin Nobby and Boko(a blundering simpleton but a famous play writer). As Boko’s luck would have it, he somehow manages to irk the aged uncle by merely trying to impress him!
Quotes:
Aunt Agatha is my tough aunt, the one who eats broken bottles and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon.
Jeeves: There was a gentleman, sir.
Bertie: With a head like a pumpkin?
Jeeves: There was a certain resemblance to the vegetable, sir.
Jeeves’ eyes had taken on the look of cautious reserve which you see in those of parrots, when offered half a banana by a stranger of whose bona fides they are not convinced.
Aunt Agatha is like an elephant- not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles more a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.
My Opinion: I have seen the TV adaption of this one long back but is way different from the book, thus revealing some creativity on the script writer’s part. The characters here are selfish and use Bertie for their own welfare. But the book has its way of endearing the characters to our hearts. We are able to empathize with all of them. This is the main difference between the book and the TV adaption. I was lucky to get a 1947 edition of this classic from my local library, it had hand-sketched drawings and made the reading experience much enjoyable.
The story itself is impeccable with hell breaking loose right from the beginning, the plot proceeds with excellent humor and ties up all ends eventually thus ensuring a happy ending for the characters but a sad one for the reader since the book is over. The good news is that books are always equipped with instant replay and can be enjoyed multiple times!
These books are not to be rated, they are to be kept on a high pedestal for worship by book lovers!
