The Saturday Morning Post (No. 46)

 

I had tracked down the ebook version of last week's Jill the Reckless on Gutenberg, and since I was on the P. G. Wodehouse page, I got out the Sunset at Blandings which listed all his books, and on which I had noted the ones I had or read, and compared the two lists, downloading the Gutenberg books that I hadn't read. The book below was one of those.

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.

The Girl on the Boat (AKA Three Men and a Maid) by P G Wodehouse  A-

This book appeared a year after Jill the Reckless, and it has some of the funniest lines Wodehouse ever wrote. It is a story where Wodehouse is front and center as the teller of the tale, breezily interjecting comments, opinions about the characters and his issues with telling this story as he goes along. Now I generally prefer that the writer remains behind the curtain, but if they decide to peek out, I prefer that they would just step out and make a performance of it. And that is what Wodehouse did here. He's telling you the story, make no mistake about that. And as I said above, he was at his peak for breezy, toss-away lines.

And yet, it took me several days to finish this story. As entertaining as his story was, I found it easy to put down after a chapter or two. I think I can place the blame for this on two factors. The first is that there are no engaging characters. Most, but not all, are not in any way unpleasant, they're just, perhaps a shade too much more caricatures than characters. There's little depth to any of them. Not that you expect great depths in any Wodehouse characters, but they all have their endearing features. But those enduring features seemed to be lacking in the characters in this book. And the second factor is that the story is pretty silly. No sillier than most Wodehouse stories, mind you, but it lacks a bit of the tightness in storytelling characteristic of his later works. And while the same could be said for the previous story, Jill the Reckless, there were much more real characters in that story.

Still, as I said, there were so many funny asides and toss away lines in this story, that I still have to give it an A- just for all the laughs. The story itself is only a B grade story.