Though I moved my L L Bean mission-style easy chair from the photo of my wall of books, it usually sits right next to it. The authors on the shelves that I can reach over, pick out, and read without having to get up from this chair include Raymond Chandler, Sax Rohmer, and P G Wodehouse. I was between library books, and so, with nothing to read, I reached out and picked one out to reread.
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.
Joy in the Morning (AKA Jeeves in the Morning) P G Wodehouse B+
This one is one of the middle books of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novels, dating from 1946. In general, I like the earliest of these stories, with Right Ho Jeeves! being my favorite novel. However, uncharacteristically for me, I actually might like the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster short stories even better than the novels. The earliest stories and novels have a freshness to them. As time went on, they became more and more formulaic as Wodehouse continued to churn out these and other books for five decades. This book in particular is very densely written, and while it has its share of laugh out loud lines - one of the characters is a writer and Wodehouse has a lot to say about writers - I found it was sometimes slow going because it was so wordy. Clever, but wordy. The reason for this wordiness, I suspect is that Wodehouse had six years to write it.
As it happened Wodehouse was living in France when the Nazis invaded France and he ended up interned for the duration of the war. Indeed, he got into some very hot water in England when he agreed to appear on a German radio broadcast, intending to assure his fans that he was alright, but it was considered in England paramount to treason for aiding and abetting the Germans. He lived in the US after the war. In any event, he had six years to go over and polish this novel, and it shows, for better or worse.
The story is typical, and nothing too original for P G. Actually its rather loosely constructed, with Jeeves running the show. He's helping Bertie's uncle Percy by marriage (to Aunt Agatha) to strike a business deal. This task brings Bertie to a Steeple Bumpleigh. Most are characters are ones we've met already in previous stories. We have his ex-fiancée Florence Craye, Uncle Percy's daughter, along with that familiar pest, his son, Edwin, the boy scout who's always several days behind on his good deeds, and Stilton Cheesewright, now a police man. New to this one is Nobby Hopwood, the girl who wants to marry is old pal, the writer, Boko Fittleworth. While Jeeves tries to help Uncle Percy land his business deal, Bertie tries various schemes to get his Uncle Percy to accept Boko as Nobby's husband, since she is his ward, and she needs his permission to marry before the age of 21. While Florence is engaged to Stilton, their romance is on the rocks, and Bertie fears he'll end up being Florence's second option if that engagement goes south. And well, all the usual mayhem ensues as Bertie tries, and largely fails, at various schemes to help Nobby and Boko while at the same time attempting to avoid becoming Florence's default husband.
As I said at the top. Lots of clever writing, plenty of smiles and laughs but for me, it lacks the off-the-cup looseness and inventiveness of the first volumes of the series, hence the B+ grade.
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