Review: Company For Henry

Company For Henry by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A standalone Wodehouse in the classic style, despite being written in 1967. I had the impression that it was set in his usual time period (between the world wars), despite an anachronistic reference to the UN, and the sums of money mentioned tend to confirm that; an annual income of 800 pounds through a legacy would certainly enable someone to leave their job in, say, 1930, but in 1967 not so much. Also, 8000 pounds is considered a reasonable price for a house in London.

It's certainly in his usual milieu: an old country house, with train trips to London (45 miles away). And the characters and plot are very much what he'd been writing since the 1920s, even down to his abiding fault, no doubt picked up from writing musical comedy, of keeping the cast tight by having them coincidentally connected in multiple ways and always happening to stumble over each other in ways that complicate the plot. He even re-uses a plot device from Money for Nothing : P.G. Wodehouse’s Original 1928 Vintage Collectible Edition, British Comedy Classic , the fake theft of an entailed heirloom.

All in all, it's a Wodehouse book, no better, but certainly no worse, than plenty of others in a similar mould. We get the sparkling banter, the mistaken and/or false identities, young love (and, in this case, middle-aged love), money as a complicating factor, schemes practical and impractical that cross and foil each other, and a happy ending.

The Everyman edition, to my surprise, lived up to its claim of being a fine edition; it's very well edited, something that can't always be said, for example, of the Penguin editions of Wodehouse.

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