Summer Moonshine

What a delight! Good laughs, squirrelly plot, wild characters, and all tied up in the end. Great fun!

Formulaic as usual but still very funny, especially the dialogue between Joe and his ex-employer, and Joe and Jane. You have to give it to Wodehouse for coming up with endless such circuitous but humorous plots. This is the last Wodehouse on my TBR-list. Definitely have to get more.

The usual suspects: a country house owned by an impoverished nobleman anxious to sell it to a princess, a talented young man who falls in love at first sight with the said nobleman's daughter, who is engaged to a wispy scoundrel who is also engaged to the said princess, who happens to be the very rich and beautiful wicked stepmother of the talented young man, whose brother loves the nobleman's secretary but thinks she has betrayed him and therefore breaks off their engagement so that she gets a process server to give him papers, but the process server turns out to be the nobleman's wife's brother, who remembers when his sister used to be in the chorus of musical comedies. Stealing clothes, along with a deus ex machina, solves show more everything, of course.

Interestingly, the stepmother, suspected of killing the young man's father by making his life miserable, gets no comeuppance whatsoever, although her schemes to make others unhappy fail. show less

This is an enjoyable book overall, but not one of Wodehouse's best. But almost any Wodehouse book is worth reading for the writing style and dialogue. It is especially enjoyable if you are listening to a Wodehouse book narrated by Jonathan Cecil.

This has some great characters in it. Tubby Vanringham who is an American, and his slang upsets the oxford accented Miss Whittaker. An amiable American process server who always gets his man. Sir Buckstone Abbott who has to take in paying guests to make the ends meet, but hates his guests.

I'm not a fan though of the main male love interest, Joe Vanringham. He's from a strain of Wodehouse leading males who usually show up in the stand-alone books. He is overly confident, constantly talking, and show more pursuing the lead female character despite her rejecting him and usually being engaged to someone else. show less

One of Wodehouse's better stand-alone novels. I was amused by the fact that one plotline revolved around a dispute between a young American and his English sweetheart over the pronunciation of various words as well as proper terminology!! As Wodehouse lived for some time in the U.S. this subject was one he knew something about :-)

Jonathan Cecil was in fine form with this narration and listening to the abovementioned dispute in audio added to my amusement considerably!

It's a prime (1937) Wodehouse- enuff said. Ok- a bit more. I was rather slow into this one. Tale of th bros Vandringham (Joe, the fun playright/pugilist/bouncer/book publisher lackey/etc and Tubby, the one in love with the secretary). Joe loves the daughter Abbot, of the ugly Walingsford Manor. Jack Abbot is trying to sell the old eyesore to Joe and Tubby rich, unpleasant step mother, the Princess. Soon, the paper server Bulpit arrives to serve papers and it turns our he is very very rich, helping the plot along in various ways. The last 50 pages or so is the payoff. Great.

So, it's good, like most Wodehouse. First time I've seen one of his with the plot device of the owners of one those gigantic English manors, noble types, who are forced to rent out rooms like some kind of Victorian B&B in order to keep the place up. Surprisingly, well, realistic is not the correct word for a romantic farce, but it's a nice change of pace. Had a couple racial slurs that caught me off guard, I will say.