Review: Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Depending on your reading order, this is the first novel-length Jeeves and Wooster, and the extra space really gives the author scope to complicate matters hilariously.

It features Bertie's one likeable aunt, Aunt Dahlia, who seems by her introduction in this book to be an aunt by marriage, but later on is portrayed consistently as a blood relative. Bertie is also very fond of her daughter (his cousin) Angela, and spends a lot of the book trying to repair the tiff between her and his old school chum Tuppy Glossop. Much more importantly, though, he's trying to get his other old school chum Gussie Fink-Nottle to get up the ginger to propose to the wet, droopy Madeline Bassett, not least because, while pleading Gussie's case to her, he accidentally leads her to the conclusion that he (Bertie) loves her himself, and if she doesn't marry Gussie there's a risk she'll fall back on Bertie. He regards this fate with horror, but his chivalric code prevents him from clearing up the misunderstanding; he'd rather end up married to a woman who he can't stand and who has made it clear to him that she loves someone else than insult her by letting her know that she's not at all his type.

From this unpromising and, on the face of it, unconvincing premise, not only one but several hilarious books unfold (I'm behind on my reviews, and I'm currently reading The Mating Season , in which Bertie is once again straining every nerve to prevent the Gussie/Madeline romance from busting up and leaving him next in line).

I think of this as peak Wodehouse, full of farcical incidents, misunderstandings, deceptions, stratagems, and looming disaster of the broken-engagement or unparallelled-French-chef-resigning level of seriousness - yet they somehow feel like matters of life and death, as if I'm reading a (completely hilarious) thriller in which the fate of nations hangs in the balance.

The incident in which Gussie, who normally only drinks orange juice, gets thoroughly drunk before going to give the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School is one of the best things Wodehouse ever wrote, which makes it one of the funniest passages in the English language. Not only what happens, but how it's described, is just one long riot from beginning to end. And Jeeves' schemes to resolve the complicated situation are things of beauty in themselves.

Very highly recommended, and it makes the Platinum tier of my Best of the Year for 2022.

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