Better than codeine as a tonic for pain | Summer Lightning

This on has it all | Summer Lightning | P. G. Wodehouse

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	• Summer Lightning P. G. Wodehouse Overlook Hardcover, 2003 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The funniest book I have ever read!

P. G. Wodehouse was indeed a genius! I have not yet read all his Blandings Castle stories, but what I have read I have enjoyed thoroughly. Though Wodehouse is probably best known for his "Jeeves and Wooster" stories since that had been turned into a remarkable BBC series, even that cannot top anything connected with Lord Emsworth, the Honourable Galahad, Beach, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Lady Constance, etc. I first stumbled across the inmates at Blandings Castle when I came across an audio of "Pigs Have Wings" which I liberated from Limewire on my computer several years ago. Since then I have been hooked. For having done so I have a keener sense of all their mannerisms. Having just finished reading this classic from 1929 I am left with some regrets; mainly that the story is over and ultimately that I have never personally experienced Lord Emsworth's "Garden of Eden"! Oh well, perhaps in my next life! Until then I will immerse myself with more P.G. Wodehouse when the next Amazon.com installment arrives!

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Better than codeine as a tonic for pain

Having read many of the jeeves stories 20 years ago and watched again recently the ITV Jeeves and Wooster starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, I thought it was time to get back to Wodehouse for some good cheer. But, I wanted to start on something different, so I decided to start with the Blandings novels - this is my third one to read in a row. Being woken up by pain every night, I find Wodehouse the perfect tonic - one is transported to a different gentlemanly world, a world where suffering appears distant and unreal.

Anyway, one of the problems about reading three in a row is that one can begin to confuse the books and characthers because the ones I have read to date all have involved stealing, Blandings and impersonation. This one reached a new level of zanyness with the main plot concerning the stealing of Lord Emsworth's prize pig. Baxter, his officious secretary, makes a comeback and is effectively humiliated and Emsworth's assumption that Baxter is a lunatic is confirmed. What makes this so entertaining is Wodehouse's descriptions. Thus, his description of Ronnie getting angry in a nightclub in being intercepted by waiters for his dress when he was making his way towards someone moving in on his girlfriend.

"Ronnie Fish in the course of his life had many ambitions. As a child, he had yearned some day to become an engine-driver. At school, it had seemed to him that the most attractive career the world had to offer was that of the professional cricketer. Later, hae had hoped to run a prosperous night-club. But now, in his twenty-sixth year, all these desires were cast aside and fogotte. The only thing in life that seemed really worthwhile was to massacre waiters; and to this task he
addressed himself with all the energy and strenth at his disposal"

And this one of the guilty Butler Beach:

"For the Butler jerked from his reverie, had jumped a couple of inches and shaken all over in a manner that was most trying to watch. A butler, felt the Hon Galahad, is a butler, and startled fawn is a starled fawn. He disliked the blend of the tow in a single body."

It is then noted that the butler "when addressed quiver like a harpooned whale".

Anyway the book is full of these obervations, humour and as usual contains buckets of romance.

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This on has it all

This is probably my favorite Blandings story. It has it all -
Lord Emsworth; his prize winning Black Berkshire pig, the Empress of Blandings; his secretary, the Efficient Baxter; the Honorable Galahad Threepwood (whose memoirs are the cause of all the excitement); Beach the Butler; and of course, an impostor and some star-crossed lovers.

From Wodehouse's preface to the book:
"A certain critic - for such men, I regret to say, do exist - made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained `all the old Wodehouse characters under different names'. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy."

This book was also published as "Fish Preferred."

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A comedy of manners focused not on the drawing room but on the pig pen.

The third in the eleven-book Blandings Castle series, Summer Lightning (1929) is a typical comedy of manners in its witty satire of upperclass life, with all its affectations, lack of perspective, and preoccupation with preserving the status quo. Like most of the Wodehouse novels, the main plot and subplots revolve around the subject of love as various characters face complications in their search for true happiness while dealing with class differences, false accusations, and even the impersonation of one character by another. Adding offbeat humor to this novel is the theft of the Empress of Blandings, the prize-winning pig (and all-consuming interest) of the dotty Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, just before the pig is due to defend its honor in an annual contest.

As the story unfolds, Hugo Carmody, a failed nightclub owner, who has been hired as Lord Emsworth's secretary, is in love with Lord Emsworth's niece Millicent, who finds herself unexpectedly engaged to her cousin Ronnie Fish, who is really in love with Sue Brown, a local dancer, who "becomes" Myra Schoonmaker, a wealthy heiress, in order to be near Ronnie. If this were not complicated enough, Pilbeam, a local detective, and Baxter, the former secretary of Lord Emsworth, appear at Blandings Castle, adding more complications in this carefully choreographed and complex plot, which also features Lord Emsworth's brother Galahad, who is writing a family memoir, which the family wants to prevent from publication. The pig thief hopes to ingratiate himself with Lord Emsworth by secreting the pig (which is fed by Beach, the castle's Jeeves-like butler) and then "finding" it later. Like love, however, the course of pig theft, too, goes awry.

The characters are stereotypical in their class and motivations, and the novel's complications follow the standard pattern of comedies of manners. Wodehouse enjoys shining the spotlight on his characters, however, and as they deal with their problems, for better or worse, some of them develop personalities beyond their stereotypes. The reader hopes for their success in love, despite their manipulations of the truth, and their sometimes foolish behavior adds an element of charm to the novel. Light in tone, despite the satire, Wodehouse novels show the absurdities of the aristocratic class, but they also show that aristocrats, too, are human, and in that respect they achieve an element of universality often missing from other satire. n Mary Whipple

Something Fresh (The Collector's Wodehouse), 1915
Leave It to Psmith, 1923
Heavy Weather, 1933
Blandings Castle, 1935
Uncle Fred in the Springtime, 1939

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Lighting or Not - I like Wodehouse in the Summer!

A great Wodehouse read, a wonderful cure for what ails you - great plot, very funny and lots of Wodehouse wit. In short, a great farce!

I read another of Wodehouse's lessor known, but very funny school boy prank books the other day, it was sooooo funny - if you like pranks, and whatnot - you will enjoy Tales of St. Austin's - Tales Of St. Austin's: A British Humor Classic

Enjoy!

The fall brings season brings three more antic selections from comic genius, P. G. Wodehouse. In Summer Lightning, the Honorable Galahad Threepwood has decided to write his memoirs and everyone dives for cover; meanwhile, Lord Emsworth's prize pig has been stolen, and the castle is abuzz with imposters all pretending to be one another.

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