Ben Schott

Paying homage to P.G. Wodehouse, the creator of the iconic series of "Jeeves" stories, Ben Schott nails it! As with all British humor, the 'dry sarcasm' often leads to laughing out loud. Point in case: "...The Seventh Earl of Sidcup is a sore for sighted eyes. It's as if evolution took a wrong turn, got stuck in a cul-de-sac, and just threw in the sponge..." The team of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster always leads to antics of the most remarkable sort, many of them strategized practical jokes that show more go far beyond most. For those who appreciate and embrace British humor, this is a book that you'll enjoy every chapter. Schott adds a "Notes on the Text" section at the back in order we understand the rather unusual elements of British nomenclature and life. Highly recommended! show less

I think it was rather foolish of me even to consider reading this book, and I am now simply annoyed with myself for failing ever to learn from simple lessons.

I have been a lifelong fan of P. G. Wodehouse, whose joyous stories and glorious deployment of the English language have been a source of happiness and comfort ever since I first read Right Ho, Jeeves, while I was till at school. In his best books (and there are several dozen that fall within that group), the plots are extremely show more complicated, utterly implausible and relentlessly delightful, as are his characters. The utter removal from any vestige of the real world is what makes the books work so well.

His prose, richly seasoned with literary quotations and biblical allusions, flows with a light cadence that belies the technical and grammatical merit of the often-complex structure. Reading his books is effortless – one simply casts of the anchor retaining our contact with the real world, and drifts with his flights of fancy into an alternative quasi-Edwardian universe where distracted lords rear prize pigs, nephews are utterly in thrall to the will of their aunts and temperamental French chefs cater to ceaseless house parties in which people covet grotesque silver cow creamers.

A few years ago, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by the Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate to write a ‘new’ Jeeves novel. I imagine this may have been as a consequence of Faulks’s dexterity at short parodies of his favourite novelists as displayed in the closing pieces in the Radio 4 literary panel game, The Write Stuff. Masterful though those short parodies are (including at least one delightful attempt to capture Wodehouse’s style), to recreate another writer’s style and sustain it for a whole novel is an immense task.

During the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring, after Bilbo rather petulantly offers to set his cosy retirement aside and do his bit by taking the Ring to Mordor, Gandalf assuages his ire, saying, "We do not doubt that … you are making a valiant offer. But one beyond your strength, Bilbo." Perhaps it might have been better for all of us if some similarly astute wizard had been on hand to counsel firstly Sebastian Faulks, and latterly Ben Schott. Faulks’s Jeeves and the Wedding Bells was a disastrous attempt to add to the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves oeuvre, and this latest offering from Ben Schott is even worse.

I think the problem in both cases is that they each try that bit too hard. Obviously writing the classic Jeeves books was nowhere near as easy as it is to read them, and I understand from the various biographies that I have read that Wodehouse put a huge effort into his writing, setting himself daily targets for a certain number of words, which he would then polish and repolish until he was satisfied that they worked. Indeed, even Wodehouse fell short of the high mark that he set himself, and some of his later books, such as Much Obliged, Jeeves show the same tell-tale signs of simply trying too hard to capture Bertie Wooster’s conversational style but failing pitifully. If Wodehouse himself couldn’t always manage it, what hope is there for other writers. Similarly, if a novelist and stylist of the calibre of Faulks can’t achieve it, what point is there in lesser writers (and while I enjoyed Schott’s Almanac, I feel that Ben Schott is definitely a lesser writer than Faulks) having a go? The only answer I can supply is simply the cynical one that the point is that there are enough fools like me prepared to be gulled by the publisher’s hype and stump up their hard earned but easily wasted money. show less

Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

What a treat to get an unexpected sequel to Ben Schott's excellent "Jeeves and the King of Clubs".

I'm usually wary of Wodehouse pastiches – anyone wanting to see what bilge they can be might want to consult any recent speech by our beloved PM – but Schott captures the joy of PG's writing. His linguistic dexterity is more than up to the task (this review could easily be a stream of quotes from the book) and show more he gets the often-unrecognised tightness of Wodehouse's writing. All with a brand new set of japes and angles for Bertie to be drawn into.

Just the thing for dark and gloomy evenings in dark and gloomy times. Top-hole. show less

A modern Bertie-Jeeves addition! And it works! The language and humor is excellent, especially at the beginning. There is also a welcome modern sensibility. Like Wodehouse's books, it trails off in the middle, and this is worse since it is longer than a typical Wodehouse. But overall I found it very enjoyable.

Lots of napping and waking:

"Saturday was as oojah-cum-spiff as a summer’s day could be. Not only was the lark on the wing and the snail on the thorn – comme par ordinaire – but show more as far as the eye could see every other member of the animal kingdom was suitably conjoined with its appropriate poetical appurtenance."

"I woke unusually early and unexpectedly refreshed, the way people pretend you do after a long cross-country run."

"An hour or so later I was lying doggo in the tall grass, checking the eyelids for holes, when Aunt Dahlia poked me with a croquet mallet." show less