The Saturday Morning Post (No. 52)

 

Another of the P G Wodehouse books I downloaded from Gutenberg. This one is set in New York.

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 Small Bachelor by P G Wodehouse  C

A short  review this time - not one of his best efforts. While it has some great lines in it, for example, in describing one of the characters he remarks that if people were dominos, he'd be a double blank. But otherwise, its a very talkative book, with a lot of Wodehouse going on and on about small details that detract from the flow of the story. Plus the story is pretty unbelievable even for a Wodehouse story. It involves the title character falling in love with the daughter of that double blank, with a domineering step-mother. (Where have we run into that character before?) The small bachelor's best friend is a know-it-all, who, despite his previous views on love at first sight, also falls in love at first sight. Supporting characters include a policeman wanting to be a poet, an ex-con valet with a pickpocket girlfriend. As with all of Wodehouse's works, it's best just to go with the flow and take all the coincidences in stride, but with this story that plan is rather challenging, not only are there so many coincidences, but as I said, he's distractingly wordy in this effort. All of which makes this novel drag a bit too much for my taste - despite the many witty lines.