I’ve gotten to 1933 in my chronological read of P.G. Wodehouse novels, and I was wondering whether there’s a general drop-off in quality in his books… so I googled what people thought, and the rough consensus is that yes indeed, after 1940 his books suck or something? And that this is almost his final top notch novel.
I guess we’ll (I mean I’ll) see!
This is in both a very typical Wodehouse book (in that there’s a lot of amusing running around for 300 pages and then things end happily) and unusual in that there’s so much continuity with the previous Blandings novel, Summer Lightning.
I mean, Wodehouse’s novel have an overwhelming amount of recurring characters, and some continuing plots, but in this one, we basically just continue the plot from the previous novel, including all the different plot strands. So Wodehouse spends the 40 first pages recapping what’s gone on before, and that’s not something he usually does, because there’s no need.
I hate being recapped to, but lots of people love it… so is that the reason lists like this feature Heavy Weather, but not Summer Lightning? But to be fair, Goodreads lists Summer Lightning first.
Anyway, after the book gets underway, I found it very amusing indeed. It’s a more worked through novel than many a Wodehouse book. Wodehouse has a tendency to have chance be the main plot driver, but he doesn’t really do that here — he put more work into the plot.
Great fun.
Heavy Weather (1933) by P. G. Wodehouse (buy new, buy used, 4.25 on Goodreads)