Review: Big Money

Big Money by P.G. Wodehouse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A standalone from Wodehouse's classic period (between the wars; this came out in 1931). It does briefly feature a minor character who was also in Sam in the Suburbs , the house agent "of druidical aspect," Mr Cornelius, and the central characters are pretty much his standard ones under different names, but he has fun with them, and so did I.

Wodehouse wrote several books with "money" in the title. As well as this book, there's Uneasy Money, Money in the Bank and Money for Nothing. His father's pension from the civil service, paid in Indian rupees because of his service in the East, had been suddenly devalued just before Wodehouse could go to university, so he knew about being a young man with a good education but minimal skills and little income, and many of his young heroes (and heroines) are stuck in this way. The typical plot involves them somehow obtaining "the needful" via comeuppance given to their stuffy, more prosperous elders, and this book has that typical plot, though with some twists. The wealthy man here decides to rip off his impoverished secretary, whose aunt left him what he believes to be a worthless mine, by buying it for less than its actually considerable worth. Meanwhile, the secretary has, by complete coincidence and without knowing who she is (or her name), fallen in love with his boss's niece, who is engaged to a close friend of his.

There's the usual tangle of multiple coincidental relationships between all of the cast members, and the usual meetings by happenstance; the hero meets his beloved three times, all briefly, and all of them involve coincidence. At this point, still not knowing her name, he proposes (which is why I give this my "thin-romance" tag). Also, of course, he has assumed a false identity, and his friend has assumed a disguise (to avoid his creditors), and everything is very complicated in the Mighty Wodehouse Manner. Courage and cleverness and a decent helping of good luck are required to untangle it all.

It's fun, though, and the prose sparkles, and I enjoyed it.

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