Review: Blandings Castle and Elsewhere:

Blandings Castle and Elsewhere: by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Prime Wodehouse from his classic period (1920s and 1930s). All of his books are implicitly set in what at least feels like the 20s and 30s, but these short stories were actually written and published in that period, so they don't ever feel (as the later ones occasionally do) that he was imitating himself.

I felt like I'd read at least some if not all of the stories in this book, but I don't seem to have it recorded on Goodreads, so perhaps it was a long time ago, or in a different format. I enjoyed the read in any case.

There are three sections to the book. The first is a set of Blandings Castle stories, with all of the things there are to love about that setting - the dithery, harmless Lord Emsworth, who does manage to stand up to his domineering sister, Lady Constance Keeble, once or twice; his beloved pig, Empress of Blandings; his extremely Scots gardener, with whom he has several battles of wills; and, of course, people pretending to be other people for purposes of romance resolution. It's a lovely place to spend time, and the hijinks are hilarious.

Then there's a story in which that red-haired menace to society Bobbie Wickham plots to free herself from her mother's plan for her to marry a stuffy politician through bare-faced lies and manipulation, in the process setting the politician and an American publisher at each other's throats, each believing that the other is mentally unbalanced. Even though I'm sure I'd read that one before, it had me chuckling.

Finally, there's a set of Mr Mulliner stories about Hollywood, in which Wodehouse genially sends up that very silly place. He had spent some time there himself, trying to get film versions of his musicals made, but the craziness of the studio system had defeated that plan; this is his revenge, if something so basically good-natured can be called revenge. Mr Mulliner, of course, is an elderly raconteur in the bar-parlour of a pub called the Angler's Rest, and usually makes some distant relative the protagonist of his stories, which immediately alerts you that these are probably tall tales. They evoke an exaggerated version of Hollywood in the period of Prohibition (the existence of which contributes to the plot of a couple of the stories).

There's a running theme, as there often is in Wodehouse, of formidable women (probably modelled on his aunts) and diffident men who sometimes grow a spine, or at least manage to give that impression, and either stand up to or stand up for the women. Sometimes, though, it's the intelligent, ruthless women who triumph over foolish men. I don't want to give the idea that it's a constant battle of the sexes, though; men and women are allies as well as adversaries, often against their stiff and unsympathetic elders. There's generally conflict in a Wodehouse story, and if it's not always resolved by the determined actions of the protagonist - if there are sometimes fortunate events that bring an unlooked-for resolution - it's still always a fun ride, because he somehow manages to engage the reader's sympathies for even the most trivial dilemmas of his most foolish characters.

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