Mass Market Paperback, 240 pages
Published June 1st 2000 by Penguin Books (first published 1923)
Synopsis-
Since his first appearance in print in 1919, Jeeves has become synonymous with British tongue-in-cheek humor. Valet to bumbling aristocrat Bertie Wooster, Jeeves is continually helping his employer out of scrapes. In this debut novel, Wooster's lovesick pal Bingo Little decides to marry and enlists his friend's help. Luckily for Wooster, Jeeves comes to the rescue.
My Review-
While Bertie Wooster is on an exile in New York after offending Aunt Agatha,
his friend Bingo Little is lovesick and now wants to marry. She thinks finding
a match is impossible without the help of her friend Bertie Wooster. That
definitely spells trouble (and laughing like a maniac for all of us.) but no
worries Jeeves will be there to his rescue which means another hour of laughing
hysterically.
This book in the B&J series is a book one can’t skip on. This book has
too many characters and being the first novella in the series means you get
continued dose of humor for a longer period of time. These newly introduced
characters form the basis of the other books of the series.
My Man Jeeves gave us a general account on who the hell Jeeves is. The
inimitable jeeves makes us delve deeper into the minds of this man. He is no
saint. He has brains and he uses it wisely. He knows it very well that Wooster
may be a rich man but is scatter-brained. One can do without money but not
without brains. The darker side of his character seems to be taking over here.
He is loyal only to himself. He was manipulative in My Man Jeeves too but he
always thought the better of Wooster then. Here he is thinking only of himself.
Wooster surfaces as someone so much different person than he had seemed in
My Man Jeeves. He has his opinions and problems. Bingo Little for him is
someone who lacks a lot. He sees her as no charming woman but a lovesick
classmate who went school with him. On one hand, he does not approve of Bingo
Little but on another hand, he highly approves of Honoria Glossop, one of the
newly introduced characters. He has his own air of pride and does not accept
sympathy. But what actually happens is the reader ends up sympathizing with him
and hating Jeeves for the person he is.
On the whole, the humor and the laughing takes a backseat and knowing the
characters becomes a priority.
About The Author-
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 30 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.
An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.
Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin - Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).
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