The Saturday Morning Post (No. 45)

 

When Berthold Gambrel reviewed a short story by P G Wodehouse - Honeysuckle Cottage on his website, A Ruined Chapel by Moonlight I commented that I didn't think it was one of Wodehouse's best efforts. I wanted something with more of his trademark, witty, slang-filled dialog. He suggested that I try the book below. I did, and he was right, it had everything I love about P G Wodehouse's stories. It was a blast.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Jill the Reckless (AKA The Little Warrior) by P. G. Wodehouse  A-

This is a fairly early novel by Wodehouse, dating from 1921, but hardly the first. He'd been writing for nearly 20 years by this point. But it is early in the sense that it was not written to a formula that became his standard a decade latter. Many of the elements of that formula are floating around in this novel, but they haven't yet been hammered into place. I won't say that this story is a serious story, but it perhaps more realistic than his later Bertie and Jeeves, or Blandings Castle stories. And he throws in a lot more description of scenery and settings than he does in later books. 

And one of the most interesting feature of this book, is that he uses his knowledge of New York and the Broadway musicals of the time to great effect in this story. Between 1915 and 1919 Wodehouse collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton to write Broadway musicals. Wodehouse wrote the lyrics to the songs. He used this firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of the New York theater, and musicals in particular to great effect in this story, having the title character, Jill become a dancer in a Broadway musical. We get to see the life of dancers and singers, managers and directors of the musicals of that the period, from the show's first practice to its first performance. In addition to Jill, we have her pompous fiancée, his domineering mother, along with a Bertie Wooster type fellow, plus a down-to-earth noble male rival to her unpleasant fiancée, and Jill's con-man uncle, as well as an assortment of theater people, from lowly dancers to directors and mighty producers. 

All in all, a very entertaining story. My only criticism is that it relies a lot on coincidences to advance the plot. But, given the type of story it is, that's easy to over look. All in all, this book offers an entertaining window to the New York of a hundred years ago, and the theater in particular. 

The book is in the public domain and the ebook version is a free download from the Gutenberg project website here.