Customer Reviews

FISH PREFERRED

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"Fish Preferred" was the first book I've read by Wodehouse. It most certainly won't be the last. The title alone led me to pick it up off the shelf. I could hardly resist something so promising, and the story kept its end of the deal by being even more spectacular than I could have imagined. I very rarely laugh out loud while reading. It is even more rare for me to read out the best bits to my friends at every opportunity. And it is an extreme anomaly for them to actually laugh at my renditions. Yet somehow all three of these things occured as I read this book. Each character is vibrant and alive, from Ronnie Fish, the red-faced slayer of waiters, to the efficient Baxter with his steel-rimmed spectacles and inclination for leaping out of windows, to Lord Emsworth and his beloved Empress. There is an amazing humor to this story that still remains strong even when filtered through my pathetic imitation of a British accent.

This book probably is one of the funniest book I have ever read. The title refers to a character named Ronnie Fish who stole a pig. This pig was the apple of the eye of lord Emsworth. The Empress (the pig) had won medals in a competition and Ronnie Fish wanted to steal it. Wodehouse creates a satire on a love problem. This goes in to relate to the missing pig. In the end, the hero Galahad puts everything back to normal again. It is the common Wodehouse theme, but altered greatly. Any one can enjoy this book. : )

Fish Preferred is one of the several delightful books in the Blandings Castle series by P.G. Wodehouse. Fish Preferred is better than many other P.G. Wodehouse books in that the plot and character development are more thorough than most which keeps the fun going longer.

Clarence, the ninth Earl of Emsworth, is at home in his castle in Shropshire where he dotes on his famous prize-winning pig, the Empress of Blandings. Having dispatched his earlier secretary, Baxter, Clarence is at peace contemplating how his pig will win again when he learns from his brother Galahad (Gally) that the neighbor's pig man is offering 3:1 odds against the Empress. Clarence and Gally presume that their neighbor, Sir Gregory Parsloe is planning to knobble the Empress. Their worst fears are borne out when the Empress disappears!

At the same time, Parsloe lives in fear that Gally will publish old stories about his wild younger days in Gally's new book. Clarence's and Gally's sister Connie wants to stop publication as well. Soon the castle is overrun with manuscript thieves!

At the same time, love is in the air. Clarence's new secretary, Hugo Carmody, is secretly and unsuitably in love with Millicent Threepwood, niece to Clarence, Connie and Gally, and Millicent is in love with him. But they need to get some financial help to pull off the merger.

Ronald Fish, a wealthy young man whose money is tied with Clarence, is also in love with an unsuitable person . . . one Sue Brown who is a chorus girl. Ronnie has proven himself to be a poor judge of investments in the past, and Clarence is skeptical of allowing any more money. It doesn't help when Clarence finds that Ronnie doesn't truly share his love of pigs!

Will love win out? Of course! It's a P.G. Wodehouse book. But before love wins, humor will take the day in many silly scenes worthy of Shakespeare's best in the forest of Arden.

This is probably my favorite Blandings story. It has it all -
Lord Emsworth; his prize winning Black Berkshire pig, the Empress of Blandings; his secretary, the Efficient Baxter; the Honorable Galahad Threepwood (whose memoirs are the cause of all the excitement); Beach the Butler; and of course, an impostor and some star-crossed lovers.

From Wodehouse's preface to the book:
"A certain critic - for such men, I regret to say, do exist - made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained `all the old Wodehouse characters under different names'. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy."

This book was also published as "Summer Lightning."