Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. WodehouseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Classic Jeeves-Wooster shenanigans, but not just previous books played over again, not least because this is the earliest novel-length story featuring the characters. There are a couple of new factors here:
1. The banjolele. This instrument is so objectionable (at least when Bertie plays it) that not only is he asked to vacate his flat because the neighbours are objecting, but Jeeves resigns rather than continue to listen to it in the country cottage Bertie then rents from his old friend Chuffy (Lord Chuffnell). Jeeves is still on the scene, though, going to work for Lord Chuffnell instead - quite probably out of a loyal desire to stay near Bertie in case of trouble, which inevitably ensues. Yes, this is very similar to other causes of conflict between Bertie and Jeeves (the purple socks, the Old Etonian spats, the white mess jacket), but it's not something that would normally come within Jeeves' remit as a valet, and he actually goes so far as to resign over it and remain outside Bertie's employment for almost the whole book.
2. The homicidal arsonist Meadowes, who Bertie hires to replace Jeeves, and who drives a good amount of the plot with his drunken antics. (view spoiler)
There's also Pauline Stoker, the American heiress and menace to navigation, who, wanting to marry Lord Chuffnell, involves Bertie in a way that inevitably causes him to face multiple trials and tribulations, including being (for official purposes) engaged to her himself for reasons which seem good at the time. She's very like Bobbie Wickham in her madcap and careless scheming that always causes other people (mostly Bertie) to end up in the soup. It's notable that when Bertie finds her in his bed wearing his pajamas (having escaped virtual imprisonment on her father's yacht by swimming ashore to see Lord Chuffnell, defying her father's explicit ban), his immediate reaction is that he'll have to sleep somewhere else, even if it's in his two-seater car or on the floor of the potting shed. It's made abundantly clear that his code of honour excludes any extramarital hanky-panky of any description, which given the number of women he's engaged to over his career is just as well.
Pauline's father, J. Washburn Stoker, is a robber baron of the old school, several times compared to a pirate by Bertie, and very used to having his own way and not being called out on his high-handedness. And there's the usual awful aunt (Lord Chuffnell's, in this case) with a bratty child (Seabury, who tries to extort "protection" money from all and sundry).
Then there's Sir Roderick Glossop, the eminent "nerve specialist" (his term) or "loony doctor" (Bertie's), who has been an antagonist in previous stories and ended up convinced of Bertie's insanity thanks to shenanigans perpetrated, in fact, by Bertie's cousins (but since it got Bertie out of marrying his daughter, it wasn't politic to correct him at the time). He and Bertie share some trials and come to a new understanding and appreciation of each other as fellow human beings, which sets things up nicely for future encounters between the two.
Content note: Both Bertie and Sir Roderick spend an appreciable portion of the book in blackface, a practice which was not, at the time, thought of in the way it is today, and there's extensive use of a term now considered a slur (modifying "minstrel", which means it's actually being applied to white performers in blackface who are presenting an exaggerated parody of black people). Again, at the time this wasn't considered objectionable, at least not by white people, but today it very much is. If this is going to be a problem for you, skip this book. There's also a bit of corporal punishment of young Seabury.
Otherwise, there are plenty of hilarious moments, and the usual sparkling language, and while Wodehouse would go on to write better Jeeves and Wooster novels, this is certainly a good one.
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