Very Good, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the earlier Jeeves & Wooster, Very Good, Jeeves sees Wodehouse with some matured characters, but a plot that is still taking baby steps.
If memory serves (and it seldom does, so take that with a necessary grain of salt!), the first few "Jeeves" books Wodehouse penned were written as short stories. This one definitely is and I'm not a huge fan. Or perhaps I should say that I prefer the full length novellas of later books. These shorts felt like they were just getting off the ground only to suddenly land. The books wherein Jeeves and Wooster get to flap their wings for the length of a novel are much more satisfying. Short though they may be, almost all of these stories pack a solid comedic punch.
While the stories change faces over the course of nearly a dozen shorts, the faces of the characters stay mostly the same, thus retaining a certain sense of continuity. Bertie's "friends" and/or old school chums Tuppy Glossop and Bingo Little pop up occasionally. That spunky bird Bobbie Wickham sticks her nose in now and then to make Bertie's life more taxing. His mostly-beloved Aunt Dahlia likewise prods poor Bertie from time to time to make sure he's not idle, much to the delight of us readers.
The collection includes:
"Jeeves and the Impending Doom"
"The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy"
"Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit"
"Jeeves and the Song of Songs"
"Episode of the Dog McIntosh" (US edition: "Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh")
"The Spot of Art" (US edition: "Jeeves and the Spot of Art")
"Jeeves and the Kid Clementina"
"The Love That Purifies" (US edition: "Jeeves and the Love That Purifies")
"Jeeves and the Old School Chum"
"Indian Summer of an Uncle" (US edition: "The Indian Summer of an Uncle")
"The Ordeal of Young Tuppy"
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