A Pure Joy Is This Jeeves In The Morning!

Jeeves in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jeeves in the Morning, aka Joy in the Morning is the stuff to give the troops! It's one of my all-time favorites in the Jeeves/Wooster line, as penned by the prolific and long-lived P.G. Wodehouse.



It includes a heap load more tales of woe for Bertie Wooster to get into and his butler Jeeves to get him out of. Also appearing is one of the best non-appearing characters, J. Chichester Clam. The poor fellow is saddled with a ridiculous name and is put through his paces in this story without even getting to say word one. I don't want to give away much more of the story, just know that the usual suspects show up for this precisely-plotted, tightly-wound, hilarious start-to-finish rollick.

Jeeves in the Morning is not completely dissimilar to other books in the series...All right, it's quite similar. You see, Wodehouse developed a winning formula and stuck with it. Reading his books is like watching a rerun of a beloved old sitcom: you can anticipate all the jokes, but you laugh anyway. It's not only the mad-capped, slap-stick shenanigans, but rather the author's wit that has you coming back for more of the same.

I read the books first, then watched the tv series (with Stephen Frye and Hugh Laurie) based on the books.



Though it's good, I didn't enjoy the show as much and wasn't sure why. But now that I've gone back and reread one of the books, it all makes sense. The key is the narration. The Jeeves/Wooster series is written as if Wooster is the narrator and as a narrator he is hilarious. Removing that element, as the tv series did, removed half the hilarity. Read the books and get a full dose of the funny!


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