Review: Summer Lightning

Summer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A re-read for me; I have the old Penguin paperback (not the exact one shown above this review), and have read it several times. I don't love the Blandings stories quite as much as the Jeeves stories, partly because their third-person narration isn't as deep into voice, but I do enjoy this one a lot.

The Blandings stories often feature someone masquerading as someone else, and here it's Sue Brown, a chorus girl who's engaged to Lord Emsworth's nephew Ronnie. Sue is pretending to be a Miss Myra Schoonmaker, who Ronnie's mother Lady Julia Fish is encouraging him to marry. The book is brim-full of memorable characters: the vague and benevolent pig-obsessed Lord Emsworth; his sister and hostess the redoubtable Lady Constance Keeble; the repellent and unethical detective Percy Pilbeam; the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's disreputable brother, who has written a book of Reminiscences of his exploits in the Naughty Nineties that the companions of his youth, now solid and respectable, do not want published under any circumstances; the Efficient Baxter, Lord Emsworth's hapless former secretary, who keeps being placed in circumstances that make him look unhinged; and Beach, the dignified butler, who can nevertheless be prevailed upon by the younger members of the family to aid and abet shenanigans against his better judgement.

Unfortunately, three of the main characters, whose romances drive much of the plot, aren't as memorable as many of the minor characters, being Wodehouse types taken pretty much from stock and without distinct personalities of their own. The three I refer to are Ronnie Fish, a short, pink, jealous member of the Drones Club who doesn't have any discernable qualities other than the ones I have just listed, and yet has inexplicably won the level-headed and likeable Sue Brown's devotion; and the would-be couple Millicent Threepwood and Hugo Carmody. I sometimes had difficulty telling Hugo and Ronnie apart, honestly, they are so undifferentiated, and Millicent is also colourless, just an interchangeable Wodehouse young woman.

Still, the plot is farcical, the language is Wodehousian, and overall it's a good time, even if three of the lovers do put the bland in Blandings.

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