Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse

There are certain things you don’t want to see when you’re considering writing a book review. A death threat from the author would be quite high up that list. As would a list of previous reviewers of their work who’ve all disappeared in ‘mysterious circumstances’. Another red flag is when the first page of that book holds a glowing quote from Stephen Fry.

   ‘What’s the point?’ you find yourself wondering, seeing his eloquent little summation laid out for all the world to see. ‘Fry got here first.’

   Still, faint heart, and all that. We can’t start the new year with a fear of comedy giants and the shadows they cast over our reviews. Also, if you’re going to be afraid of comedy giants, then why are you coming near P.G. Wodehouse in the first place?

   My gateway drug into the world of Wodehouse was actually Stephen Fry. (There’s no escaping the man!) When he and Hugh Laurie donned the costumes of Jeeves and Wooster for a new ITV adaptation of the novels, my parents couldn’t restrain their curiosity and, being a boy trapped in a 20th century house which only offered at best maybe four TV channels and one TV, I had little choice but to follow them in.

   It wasn’t long before we were all hooked into the knotted problems Wodehouse would put in Bertie’s path and the many strange, eccentric characters who’d appear in whichever country house he’d find himself trapped within this time, as he prayed for his butler to find a scheme which would save the day.

For a long time now, thanks to my love of those shows, I’ve had a pile and Wooster omnibuses hanging about the house. The only problem being that I know most of those stories far too well. So, whenever I choose to dip into one, I rarely find myself drawn into the dancing prose and Wodehouse’s delight in Bertie’s use of slang. Instead, I just remember which episode borrowed some of this particular plotline.

It’s roughly the same problem I’ve been having with Lord of the Rings since I first went to a cinema to see Fellowship of the Ring. Yes, I know the books are written well. Yes, I know they are undisputed classics in the world of fantasy genre. I just didn’t come across quite so many poems when I first encountered these characters.

   Since last year, I’ve been making more of an effort to read funnier books. (Which probably, and rather unfairly, cast Tolkien ever further down the TBR pile if I’m being honest.) I’d fancied a bit of a laugh after dipping into the more literary end of the fictional rainbow for a time. Don’t get me wrong, highbrow books can be very enlightening. They can also, however, leave you rolling your eyes at someone deeply determined to spend 300 pages showing you just how clever they are.

   Now, if you do decide to go hunting for humorous novels, there are some names you simply can’t avoid, and Wodehouse is definitely one of the load bearing central columns when it comes to lists of funny novels. Which was why, in need of a good laugh, I made the decision to sidestep Bertie and his butler and take a trip to Blandings instead.

   Blandings, a large and rambling country estate which acted as the setting for eleven of Wodehouse’s novels, is home to some of his most beloved, bumbling characters and tangled narratives. The likes of Douglas Adams, Ben Elton and the inescapable Fry (of course) all hold the Blandings books in pretty high esteem. Also it’s one of the many inspirations behind Viv Stanshall’s fantastically strange Rawlinson End stories. So it felt worth fiving them a look.

   Not that I was worried about encountering some wild curveball of a novel here. Going into a P.G.W. book, you always know roughly where you’re heading. The groundwork to his stories follow some quite comfortable patterns. If you’re in the company of Mr Wooster, then you can guarantee some dangerous, man-eating aunt is going to arrive early on with a task for Bertram, and he’ll soon be up to his neck in hot water as he tries to steal someone’s memoirs or sink another attempt to marry him off.

   From the two Blandings novels I’ve read now, these stories actually come from outside of the main characters who dwell in the house. Both Something Fresh and Summer Lightning are centred around characters who end up being drawn to the eponymous estate.

In the case of Something Fresh, we have a reluctant if successful pulp fiction writer, a chorus girl, a daughter of an American millionaire obsessed with collecting Egyptian artefacts and a suspicious character called Jones who all end up embroiled in a joyous series of coincidences and farcical attempts at robbery whilst staying in the halls, bedrooms and grounds of Blandings.

   The only downside to the novel, in a sense, is that the main characters of Blandings make mainly cameo appearances throughout their book. They appear for a chapter or two at a time, blundering into the narrative to accidentally drive it forward, as our heroes try to maintain/end engagements or steal back wrongly stolen treasures. Either that, or they’re the foil to a moment where someone nearly triumphs. Ideally, you want to spend more time in the company of the benign, befuddled, only ever half focused Lord Emsworth or his empty headed, wide eyed son, occasionally son Freddie. Or, of course, the watchful if flawed glare of the Efficient Baxter.

   Although it doesn’t take too many pages before you realise the real hero of the story here is Wodehouse himself. His style of narration works like some dangerously addictive drug. A cocktail fuelled firework. He is not above using every trick in his vast bag to keep you entertained. He starts chapters by lamenting the life of a novelist, saying he’d rather be writing screenplays, as the more emotional moments waiting ahead of you both would be far easier to convey in a script, without the bother of going into all the messy details. His descriptions absolutely fly off the page. His characters and pacing feel impeccably polished. He is so at home in this world that you can positively hear the man purr.

It makes me wish that he’d written some of the Bertie Wooster books in this style. There’s something so joyous about picking up a book and spending a few pages in the company of a voice like Wodehouse. You can feel him sitting at his typewriter, chuckling away, as he rattles through paragraph after paragraph of this light, inoffensive fluff.

   Now, granted, I know Wodehouse won’t be for everyone. His stories are set in a very particular era and there is definitely only a narrow cross section of the world on show here. You aren’t going to find a lot of social conflict or painful human truth here. They are, however, really good fun if you can settle into their rhythm and their slightly blinkered view of the society.

Not that Something Fresh is perfect by any means. This was his first attempt at a Blandings novel, after all. Which means not all the characters you’d expect to find waiting for you at the house are present yet, and some of them aren’t fully formed. A couple of them, Beach the butler in particular, felt very different from what I was expecting.

   Instead, you are going to spend a lot of time with characters who meet his more famous creations for a few pages at a time. Still, those characters have a lot to offer and there is so much fun to be had in watching Wodehouse set up these seemingly separate lives and then start to weave all of their fates together. He does it all at a frantic, almost Olympian pace. You won’t find yourself hanging around between plot points. It doesn’t take P.G. long to get you from the sight of a young man trying to carry out his exercises outside his apartment block, to a scarab purloined during a distracted thought, to the shady office of large man who is unafraid of the word blackmail where young women and poetry left at stage doors are concerned. There is also something so delightful about a scene where a millionaire struggling with his digestion decides he wants his new valet to read a recipe book to him when he’s struggling to sleep.

   If you’re looking for a zippy, fun read and you’re okay with stories about rich people who don’t really suffer from any sort of real world problems, then I’d say this book is well worth a gamble. It won’t take you long to race through, and it won’t take you many pages to find this is a ray of escapist, blissful sunshine in disguise, just waiting to be unleashed when you most need it.