Review: Heavy Weather

Heavy Weather by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An old favourite for me; I have a paperback copy that I've read several times over the years. It's a typical Blandings Castle farce, carrying straight on from the previous book in the series (Summer Lightning), with further threats to the planned union of Ronnie Fish and Sue Brown, more scheming around the manuscript of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood's Reminiscences, further underhand work by the repellant private inquiry agent Percy Pilbeam, and more vagueness (and paranoia about pig-nobbling) from Lord Emsworth. There's a new element, too, in the form of Monty Bodkin, replacing Hugo Carmody as Lord Emsworth's secretary; he has plenty of private money, but wants to marry the daughter of a businessman who requires him to hold a job for a year to prove he's worthy to do so. His idiotic scheming in service of this goal (and his long-ago engagement to Sue, which they attempt, from the best motives, to conceal from the jealous Ronnie) causes many of the complications in the plot.

I still don't see what Sue sees in Ronnie; we learn that he's short, pink, given to jealousy, and a fathead, and none of that accounts for her love for him, especially given that she (pretty, petite, sensible and personable) could do far better. This is a weakness in both books, and, along with the fact that it reiterates a lot of the plot of the previous volume, drags the rating down to the Bronze tier of my Best of the Year list. It's still a recommendation.

Whoever typeset the Penguin edition was a very C3 performer who introduced multiple basic punctuation errors and several typos. It shows every sign of having been rushed out quickly and cheaply, which given how much money Penguin must have made from it over the years (my edition is the fifth printing, in the 1980s, and I'm sure it's had multiple printings since) is frankly scandalous.

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