Sunset at Blandings
by P.G. Wodehouse (Chatto & Windus, 1977; revised Everyman’s Library, 2015)
The final, unfinished Wodehouse novel. Much like Pratchett’s ‘The Shepherd’s Crown’, the un-fleshed-out text stirs memories of what was, while throwing light on the authorial process. In this instance, Plum-worship has led to the adding of copious and mostly inconsequential third-party annotations.
Jeeves and the Leap of Faith
by Ben Schott (Little, Brown and Company, 2020); audiobook read by Daniel Ings (Hachette, 2020)
An earnest but ultimately pallid homage. The characters are in keeping, the plot suitably entangled. But while conscientious, Schott’s pastiche lacks the trenchant delivery with which Wodehouse chivvied his characters towards the denouement (here lacking). Ings’s audiobook reading is rather too restrained.
A Pelican at Blandings
by P. G. Wodehouse (Barrie & Jenkins, 1969)
Though less satirically relevant nowadays, Wodehouse’s novels of the (farcically characterised) idle rich retain their charm, not least of all by way of a prose style that in tone both adopts and parodies the lifestyle, romping with indifference, self-indulgence and Machiavellian remove.