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A review by linda_don
Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse
3.0
When I first read the summary for this book, I wondered if "Leave It to Psmith" had been retitled. The settings and characters are generally the same: a party at Blandings Castle, multiple false identities, a valuable object stolen, a clever woman, and an impoverished young man.
In comparison with "Psmith", a quality that stood out here was the self-consciousness that wound through the plot. A waiter at the Senior Conservative Club entertains his friends by imitating the various stupidities of the upper class he encounters at work, and at Blandings, Joan complains that life seems a "meaningless jumble" that people try to make into significant stories. I hadn't seen this transparency in a Wodehouse novel before and didn't know how to explain the deviation until reading in "Over Seventy" that this was the first novel that Wodehouse wrote on English countryside life:
"... [It] now occurred to me that I knew quite a lot about what went on in English country houses with their earls and butlers and younger sons. In my childhood in Worchestershire and later in my Shropshire days I had met earls and butlers and younger sons in some profusion, and it was quite possible, it now struck me, that the slick magazines would like to read about them. I had a plot all ready and waiting, and two days later I was typing on a clean white page: "Something Fresh by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse," and I had I feeling that I was going to hit the jackpot."
Overall, "Something Fresh" is a cheerful read. I listened to the audiobook narration by Jonathan Cecil.
In comparison with "Psmith", a quality that stood out here was the self-consciousness that wound through the plot. A waiter at the Senior Conservative Club entertains his friends by imitating the various stupidities of the upper class he encounters at work, and at Blandings, Joan complains that life seems a "meaningless jumble" that people try to make into significant stories. I hadn't seen this transparency in a Wodehouse novel before and didn't know how to explain the deviation until reading in "Over Seventy" that this was the first novel that Wodehouse wrote on English countryside life:
"... [It] now occurred to me that I knew quite a lot about what went on in English country houses with their earls and butlers and younger sons. In my childhood in Worchestershire and later in my Shropshire days I had met earls and butlers and younger sons in some profusion, and it was quite possible, it now struck me, that the slick magazines would like to read about them. I had a plot all ready and waiting, and two days later I was typing on a clean white page: "Something Fresh by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse," and I had I feeling that I was going to hit the jackpot."
Overall, "Something Fresh" is a cheerful read. I listened to the audiobook narration by Jonathan Cecil.