Customer Reviews

Love Among the Chickens

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Long before there were Jeeves and Gally, P.G. Wodehouse was writing excellent comic novels about the foibles of the English upper classes. A number of these novels were built around the humorous character of Ukridge, a sort of beautiful dreamer who wanders about above the fray of dealing with reality. I recently read a fine companion book about Mr. Wodehouse's novels and realized that I had missed some fine early examples. Love Among the Chickens beckoned to me and I'm glad it did.

It can be expensive to know Ukridge. He'll invite you out to dinner, discover he has no funds, borrow the funds from you and never pay you back. Needless to say, friends try to avoid him.

Jeremy Garnet, the striving novelist, has successfully avoided his old school chum for some time when bad luck causes Ukridge to find Garnet's address. Soon, Ukridge is found barreling through the door along with the new Mrs. Ukridge to invite Garnet to the shore to co found an entrepreneurial enterprise, a chicken farm. In Ukridge's eyes, this is a made-to-order money machine. You borrow some chickens, raise some of your own, return the original chickens and your bounty expands from there. Naturally, neither Ukridge nor Garnet have the slightest knowledge or experience about raising chickens to lay eggs.

On the way to the shore, Garnet sees a lovely young woman who's reading one of his novels. He's immediately smitten, and the complications begin. Without a Jeeves to help him, things go downhill rather rapidly . . . interspaced with modest rallies.

You will enjoy some of the most humorous views of a new chicken farm that you can imagine with this book. What makes it even more delightful is that the book's dedication to Bill Townsend in 1920 (to the second edition) makes it clear that the book has nonfiction roots in the real-life adventures of Bill's friend on his Devonshire chicken farm.

Like most Wodehouse novels, little time is wasted in building humor and romantic possibilities. Enjoy!

The original version of "Love among the chickens" was substantially revised by Wodehouse at the start of the 1920s, and it is the revised volume that has finally emerged from its long period out of print. The central character of Ukridge (remarkably, married by this stage) offers Wodehouse the ideal combination of farce and dialogue that has served him so well in the past. As ever, the plot is incidental to the overall enjoyment of the book.

The fact that Wodehouse revised the work after his comic style had emerged (moving away from the schoolboy tales of his early years) does come through on occasions. Every once in a while a piece of dialogue or a phrase will jar slightly - noticeable only because of the generally smooth text surrounding it. It does not damage the enjoyment of the book, but it does remind the reader of how accomplished Wodehouse became in the post war era by highlighting the evolution of his style.

Not his very best, but still very amusing. Title says all about the plot: boy meets girl among chickens, boy loses girl among chickens, boy wins girl among chickens. A quick read, under-plotted by Wodehouse's later standards.

NOTE: This, and all Wodehouse's early stuff (20 or 30 years' worth!), is available in its entirety online! For free!

Ok, when my friend told me there was this free amazon book I HAD to have, I admit I was a skeptic. love among the chickens?-very weird! But this book is tons of fun, with robust characters, ridiculous conversations, and enough absurdity that I found myself giggling aloud at times. No, it's not the great literature of our times, yes it is a blast to read. Seriously, what do you have to lose? ONLY for people who have a sense of humor, the rest of you can skip it.

A newly married Ukridge tackles the pitfalls of poultry farming: early Wodehouse with some hilarious moments foreshadowing his masterful maturity. Funny characters and delightful passages will brighten any Plum-lover's day. A valiant effort by Kessinger Publishing (reprinting hard-to-find material), but the manuscript-like booklet has an amateurish feel.

This is Wodehouse's first novel for grown-ups, though only available in an edition revised years later. It's better-plotted than his earlier schoolboy novels, and shows some hints of his later genius, but only hints. Wodehouse uses some of his signature plot devices, but he uses them here without irony, unlike in his mature work. (I sometimes suspect that Wodehouse's later work parodies his early work.) Oddly, though Ukridge is supposedly based on a real person, he is one of Wodehouse's most implausible characters, generally acting preposterously merely to advance the plot. The style is quite good, though, so I suspect that the 1920 version was fairly thorough rewrite of the 1906 original, a point on which there is some dispute. (The reference to Maxim Gorky, Trotsky, and Lenin in chapter 10 seems unlikely to have been written in 1906, for example.)

Some books, like wine, not only withstand the tests of time but are improved by it. I had read this book probably 20 years ago, but found it again when searching for a book on building chicken coops. I re-read it, and enjoyed it even more this time...

I DO wish that the volunteers that make these books available to the public would take a few extra minutes and write a description instead of the generic "this work was made available by..."

If you love old movies that are filled with human emotion instead of car crashes and sex scenes and you like remembering (or dreaming of) the day when men were gentlemen and women were ladies, then you'll enjoy this as much as I did.

As usual, Wodehouse lays it on thick. Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukbridge is a case of typical Ignorant arrogance: lack of knowledge on a subject is no reason to do research; one of his caliber automatically knows everything and should be heeded. Likewise, merchants and creditors who loan money to him only show what kind of lowlife cretins they are when they expect repayment.
Likewise, Jeremy Garnet, novelist who is a guest of Ukbridge's house, needs a lot of time to mull, and ends up thinking only of true love when all is falling down around his host. He accepts very little responsibility and is glad to acknowledge that, in addition to gaining his true love, marriage will mean his uncle will support him.

Absence of comment on work of the narrator, Jonathan Cecil, is puzzling. His performance is absolutely spot-on. The combination of Woodhouse's nascent genius and Cecil's brilliance make this one of the most enjoyable audiobooks I have ever listened to.

"Love Among the Chickens" is the first adult oriented Wodehouse story, and introduces Stanley Featherstonehaugh (changed from the original edition spelling: Featherstonhaugh) Ukridge. This is the updated edition of the Wodehouse classic, published originally in May of 1921. This is the better of the editions, as there was a considerable rewrite, tightening up the story, making it more humorous and improving what was already an enjoyable romp. This is the version to read, unless you have a desire to see what the original was like.

The general story in the two editions is the same. The main character is Jeremy Garnet, an author working on his new novel, who learns that an old acquaintance, i.e. Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, whom he knew from when they were both masters at a school earlier in life, is looking for him. His desperate attempt to flee before Ukridge can find him fails, and he gets sucked into the newly married Ukridge's latest scheme to make money, chicken farming. Neither Ukridge, nor his wife Millie, nor Garnet know anything about chicken farming, but that doesn't deter Ukridge in the least, in fact he believes that simply means they aren't burdened down with pre-existing theories. On the way to the farm - a house which a friend of Millie's allows them to lease for free - Garnet sees, and falls for Phyllis, the daughter of a Professor. Naturally, there are plenty of landmines which stand between Garnet and happiness, perhaps the biggest one being Ukridge, but in what would become typical Wodehouse fashion he successfully navigates his way to a happy ending.

The difference between the two editions is in the details. There was an extensive rewriting of the book between the two editions, and Wodehouse clearly learned a lot about telling a story in the interim. In most cases, the rewrites tell the story in a more succinct and more humorous fashion. There are two significant changes: the first being Garnet confronting the Professor in chapter 19. In the original edition he does this by himself, but in this edition Ukridge goes with him. Naturally, having Ukridge there adds to the humor, especially when Ukridge was the cause of the problems between Garnet and the Professor to begin with. The other significant change is the elimination of an epilogue which simply wasn't needed and didn't improve the story, Instead, Wodehouse moves up the ending joke to the end of the last chapter, which makes it funnier.

Ukridge is a wonderfully annoying character, and this is the only novel in the Ukridge series. There is also a collection of Ukridge stories titled "Ukridge" from 1924 (also known as "He Rather Enjoyed It", and there are Ukridge stories in the collections "Lord Emsworth and Others" from 1937, "Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets" from 1940, "Nothing Serious" from 1950, "A Few Quick Ones" from 1959, and "Plum Pie" from 1966. Ukridge is large and loud, very opinionated and likes to give it at every opportunity. He often convinces people to lend him money, or give him credit, and then has difficulty paying them back, but with all those negatives he manages to not lose his companions, and so there is something worthwhile there which helps him persevere. The first edition is good, the rewrite is significantly improved. Four stars for the updated text.