review by Ro Bennett on show 30th June
I absolutely loved this book. It’s ridiculous and slap stick but I found it very, very funny. It was a perfect book to take away on holiday. I read it on the station, at the airport, on the plane, the coach, the beach. It was easy to immerse myself in it and I kept sniggering out loud which was a bit embarrassing. As I read it I could visualise Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster and they fitted the characters perfectly.
The book has so many interesting and entertaining characters and an excellent intricate plot with countless twists and turns. Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia wants him to go to Totleigh Towers to pinch back an antique cow creamer from Sir Watkyn Bassett who appropriated it inappropriately from Bertie’s Uncle Tom. Unfortunately Sir Watkyn Bassett is the magistrate who once fined Bertie five guineas for copping a policeman's helmet on Boat Race night. Bertie had previously been sent by Aunt Dahlia to the antique shop where the cow creamer was for sale to cast doubts on its value to try to bring the price down. Whilst pretending to examine it, he trips over a cat and falls through the door still clutching the cow creamer just as Sir W and friend Roderick Spode arrive. Sir W recognises Bertie as a criminal who has come up before him in court and assumes he is trying to steal the cow creamer. So Bertie does a runner, narrowly avoiding arrest.
At the same time as Aunt Dahlia is urging Bertie to go to Totley Towers, he receives urgent telegrams from his old pal, Gussie Fink-Nottle, who Aunt Dahlia refers to as ‘Spink-Bottle’ to come there to to save his engagement to Madeleine Bassett, daughter of Sir Watkyn. So with a bit of blackmail from Aunt Dahlia and a strong desire to avoid having to marry Madeleine himself should her engagement to Gussie fail, he sets off with Jeeves and a good deal of trepidation.
When Bertie arrives, he is of course confronted by Sir W and the thug Spode who is a would be dictator and leader of the Black Shorts - a hilarious parody of Oswald Mosley and his Black Shirts.
To complicate matters further, there is the love interest of Stiffy Byng and Reverend Stinker Pinker and how that impinges on the search for a little brown leather notebook in which Gussie has written all sorts of derogatory observations about Sir W and Spode. Gussie doesn’t know where he has misplaced it and there is a race to find it before it falls into the hands of Sir W or Spode - with disastrous consequences.
It is of course up to Jeeves to disentangle and rectify all the repercussions which ensue...
It was an excellent read and I thoroughly recommend it. I bought it from i books and the only problem with that is that I have since had to purchase the paper back so that I can lend it to my friends and family!
review by Ro
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