Good Hope Enterprises

Here is a warning followed by a note,

Don’t you read this tale on a train or a boat;

There will be no one around with whom you can share,

Each bloke will fix you with their perplexed stare.

That’s what happens on a Wodehouse ride,

You will guffaw at each turn and chuckle at each stride!

Characters:

J. Hamilton Beamish is a debonair scholar who is a stickler for proper words used in communication and is a living image of style and grandeur. He has booklets giving advice for everything ranging from poultry farming to poetry! This character was so well defined that I felt he would point out a serious mistake in this sentence, were he to read it! He strongly believes that love is an emotion to be felt only after careful calculation and reasoning.

George Finch is a great friend of Mr. Beamish but is strikingly contrasting in personality. He is mild, docile and has recently fallen in love at first sight with Miss Molly who is a neighbor.

“I class him among Nature’s white mice, ” as described by Beamish.

Mullet – A butler / valet for both these gentlemen and a burglar in his past!

“A man with an abhorrent vocabulary, ” as described by Beamish.

Sigsbee H Waddington – He is the richest and meekest personality among all the characters. But he literally stands out since he has this eccentric habit of forgetting names.(Me being a Bollywood fan, found this character to be strikingly similar to Paresh Rawal in Awaara Pagal Deewana.)

“He seems to have been kicked by a mule on his head during childhood, ” as described by Beamish.

Mrs. Waddington – The second wife of Mr. Waddington, she is a woman of strong personality and dominates everyone in her home and outside as well!

“She has a soul like the underside of a flat stone”, as described by Beamish.

Story: Any work of P.G.Wodehouse has a wafer thin story line made complex by little side plots bound by hilarious dialogs and odd character descriptions. This one is no different. How George Finch manages to gain entry into the family, pursues his lady-love in his own blundering ways and marries her forms the crux of the story.

After reading this book in hard copy, I also listened to the audio version narrated by renowned actor Jonathan Cecil. Exclaiming at the twists, stammering for the weak characters’ dialogs, speaking with eloquence for the stronger ones and providing voice-overs to the vast number of individuals, the narrator has made the listening experience thoroughly enjoyable!

The entire book is filled with quotable quotes, listing a few of them:

Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.

He had that extra four or five inches of neck which disqualifies a man for high honors in the beauty competition.

I could make a poet out of far less promising material. I could make a poet out of two sticks and a piece of orange peel.

My Opinion: It has always been a tremendously difficult task to review the works of P.G. Wodehouse. His books pose a big challenge for reviewing due to their complex plots and hilarious misunderstandings among characters. The rich vocabulary usage laced with meticulous similies and laughable yet plausible character descriptions make this dish extremely enjoyable. If this review made you smile even once, this book is for you

this is what I want to tell.

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