Customer Reviews

Heavy Weather

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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In most P.G. Wodehouse stories, the innocents and the not-so-innocents attempt to solve tricky family problems with feats of misdirection and partial truths. The result of these complicated ruses is usually a great deal of unexpected consequences that will tickle almost any funny bone. Heavy Weather is an unusually fine example of this type of story.

Monty Bodkin, who's rolling in dough, must hold a job for a year to win the approval of his fiancee's father. Then the wedding bells can chime. Monty isn't the most helpful fellow, and makes a hash out of his writing for Tiny Tots. He soon uses his uncle's influence a second time to get a new job as private secretary to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, whose pride and joy is his prize-winning pig, the Empress of Blandings.

This new employment creates much consternation for Sue Brown, who is engaged to marry the jealous Ronnie Fish. Monty and Sue had been engaged earlier, and Sue's afraid that Ronnie won't be able to handle having Monty around. Wedding bells for Sue and Ronnie depend on getting Clarence to release trust funds for Ronnie. There are a few other problems, as well. For example, Sue earns her living as a chorus girl. What will Ronnie's mother, Lady Julia, think?

The key theme of the story is that true love will win out, if the lovers follow their hearts and seize opportunity when it arises. In that way, the end will charm almost anyone . . . much like Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream does.

In most stories like this, you can anticipate how the obstacles will be overcome. Well, Heavy Weather will surprise you, if you are like me. The plot complications and resolution are delightfully adept, acrobatic, and subtle. I felt like I was watching the elephants do their ballet dance again in Fantasia. The contradictions between the messy moments and the final neatness are brilliantly handled!

The conflict between the desire to have a good reputation and the willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed (including cutting all possible corners) is shown off to good effect in Heavy Weather. Developing this point creates questions about what real goodness is, versus assumed goodness from social position and family connections. In fact, inherited intelligence is also questioned for its morality. The more powerful minds in the story tend to use those capabilities to plot for self-advantage, rather than to accomplish anything meaningful for all involved. Those of limited intelligence, by contrast, tend to follow their hearts and try to do the right thing.

Good results follow in this story whenever people are loyal and honor goodness.

What can you accomplish by being loyal and honoring goodness today? And tomorrow?

Heavy Weather

Some humor is timeless. My father loved Wodehouse. I'd hear him in the living room laughing out loud, and catch him reading Wodehouse. Now, I hear my husband in the living room laughing out loud, reading Wodehouse.

So I read this book. It is set in a timeless England, somewhen between the wars. The people Wodehouse writes about are archetypes, and are as familiar as the faces around my table at Thanksgiving. The situations are pure farce. I ask myself, how does this work?

I think it's the language. No one writes like Wodehouse. His timing and word choices are unique.

I invite you to sample a timeless classic that will never be a book you are proud to be caught reading, but will always be a friend that can cheer you up in the bleakest of weather. Wodehouse. Ah.

PART OF THE BLANDINGS CASTLE SAGA. GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU. WHENEVER YOU FEEL BLUE READ 2 PAGES BEFORE SLEEPING.

I think I'll read a Wodehouse every year. The stories are largely the same, the characters quite transparent. But the style is just wonderful. My favourite run of novels are Blandings related - pig husbandy and theft, various misjudgements of the heart, mad Aunts. Its all here in spades.

Were he not so much fun, I'd curse the day I heard of PG Wodehouse because the reading of his books has the force of addiction for me. I've scarcely gone a day in the last year and a half without reading a few pages of Wodehouse. I'm particularly fond of the Blandings stories and this one is one of the best. It is either the sequel or prequel to Summer Lightening. In the inimitable style of the addled Lord Emsworth, I can't recall which, nor can I be bothered to figure out for you, dear reader. Get them both as they are equally wonderful.

This certain novel has a really complex plot, very many characters, so it is pretty hard to tell if there's a real centre-character in this book because there are so many differnt people that dramatically change the course of happenings. It has a fairly good story but what I was amazed about the most, was the poor ending of the novel and its lack of GREAT humor. To first-time Wodehouse-readers I recommend books like Right Ho Jeeves and The Mating Season.