Review: Something New

Something New by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

British title "Something Fresh," but in America that had connotations of "cheeky".

The first in the Blandings Castle series, which Wodehouse returned to throughout his long life, lays the groundwork for the familiar classic Wodehouse style. The absent-minded Earl of Emsworth (at this point, obsessed with gardening rather than pigs); his humourless secretary, the Efficient Baxter; assorted relatives who are either idiots, termagants, or schemers; and a supply of a few more schemers from external sources make up an entertaining cast for a farcical plot full of imposture, hilarious mishap, and well-intended theft.

Like others of his early books, the central romantic couple are in difficult economic straits, having to take bad work in order to make ends meet, and willing to take significant risks for a chance of improving their lot. It's a theme that would recur again in future, but as his own success mounted, the sense of true desperation tended to fade.

We also get the theme of escaping from an unwanted engagement, which was to form such a keystone of the Jeeves books.

I've been reading a few of the early Wodehouse books, and this is the first that really feels like the later books in style and tone. It also doesn't rely quite so much on blatant coincidence as the other early works, though a big coincidence is needed to get everyone to Blandings so the plot can unfold. Accordingly, I'm giving it a slot in my Best of the Year list.

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