Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Even Wodehouse's Weaker Novels Are Fun . . ., September 22, 2001
but I wouldn't want anyone basing his/her opinion of the large and largely breathtakingly wit of Wodehouse's collected work based merely on this budget anthology. The novels are set in post-World War II England, and as such they reflect those dispiriting times. The great mansions are in ruin from confiscatory taxation, TV distracts the intellect, Hollywood (not the London theater) dominates popular entertainment, and a loyal butler like Jeeves is clearly a holdover from a different era in which his employers were not, relatively speaking, impoverished. Wodehouse's fans (of which there are many, both in the UK and the USA) will probably want to read these novels anyway. But if you are contemplating your first exposure to Wodehouse, I'd recommend instead any of his "classic" Bertie-and-Jeeves novels from the 1920s, when social class, punctilio, pith, dry wit and a plenitude of household help for the rich were integral elements of this type of humor. CARRY ON, JEEVES! happens to be my favorite, but there are plenty of other wonderful reads from this era.
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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Most Curious Collection, October 13, 1999
By A Customer
I'm a huge Wodehouse fan, and I find this to be the oddest of all collections. Unlike anything else I've read by Wodehouse, these tales take place after WWII, imbuing the normally bucolic Wodehousian universe with a discomforting sense of dread, of post-war angst. Wodehouse, who himself had much angst following the War, seems to let it show in these stories. A Postlapsarian Wodehouse is a very shaky Wodehouse indeed; oh, for the edenic airs of Blandings Castle, or the gentle hum of the Drones in the early afternoon. The reader is better off there.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully funny, but flawed, April 6, 1999
By A Customer
I read this set of five novels over last Thanksgiving, while cooped up in a car with the 'rents on a trip to visit my sister. It was my introduction to Wodehouse, and served me well in that capacity. I very rarely laugh out loud at books, and I did so several times while engrossed in this collection. But... reading five Wodehouse novels in two days makes you realize just how formulaic the characters and plots can be. Essentially Wodehouse novels are the literary equivalent of sitcoms. Very good sitcoms, to be sure, more on the order of "Frasier" than of "Friends," but by the time you read the fifth novel in this book, you won't be surprised by any of the plot's turns. My advice -- don't read 'em all at one sitting, and you might enjoy the experience more.
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