It's funny while being intricate, and manages to juggle numerous distinct character lines without any apparent effort. It is the culmination of the 'Psmith' sequence of stories and only the second episode in the 'Blandings' saga. In short, it is 'Leave It To Psmith', and it is easily one of Wodehouse's best novels, in my limited experience. The 'Jeeves' stories are still to come, and a whole era of Wodehouse remains untouched.
There's a mighty freshness to Wodehouse's work prior to the Second World War and his dubious misadventures, beyond which it feels somehow unnecessary to tread at the moment. Reading his works for the first time is like the first taste of an ice cream soda, or singing and dancing in the rain on a blustery day, and this is one of the best.
What is 'Leave It To Psmith' about? On this occasion, that's quite a difficult question to answer. There's Psmith, one of Wodehouse's earlier characters, seeking employment after resigning from an odious, and odorous, family job in the fish business falls into fairly innocently impersonating a poet who is about to visit Blandings Castle, as a means of following the extremely freshly discovered love of his live Eve, who has been hired to catalogue their library. Simultaneously, the Earl of Emsworth's brother-in-law, Joe Keeble, and Emsworth's idiot son Freddie conspire to steal Constance Keeble's fabulous necklace and then return it as part of a scheme to liberate some money from her control for the noble purposes of helping some friends, and themselves. Freddie enlists Psmith, and then Eve (love of both their lives), in the necklace scheme, little suspecting that a fellow guest and poetess is also on the hunt for the jewellery. Not only that, but the efficient Baxter, secretary extraordinaire is hot on all their trails, and flowerpots feature heavily in the plot, with a recurring theme of hollyhocks. Ah, hollyhocks... All in all, it would be complex, if not for the wonderful prose.
'Leave It To Psmith' is a daft and entertaining diversion, with some excellent juggling of all the various elements, and some endearing silliness all around as we untangle numerous impostures, attempts at theft, flingings of flowerpots, and one throughline in which everyone, except Lady Constance Keeble, is out to help the course of true love for Psmith's and Eve's old friends Mike and Phyllis.
It's lovely.
O.
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