Title: The Crime Wave at Blandings
Author: P.G. Wodehouse
Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2011
Pages: 96 pages
First appeared in: Saturday Evening Post, 1936 & "Lord Emsworth and Others", 1937
Original Language: English
+15 October 1881 in Guildford, Surrey, UK
* 14 February 1975 in Southhamton, New York, USA
For a story that is almost 100 years old "The Crime Wave at Blandings" is surprisingly fresh! It's a short story set in the Blandings Castle Universe - a reacurring fictional location within Wodehouse's oeuvre where Lord Emsworth and several members of his family live.
In this particular story Lord Emsworth's sister Lady Constance decides that Lord Emsworth's grandson George needs a tutor and chooses Rupert Baxter who Lord Emsworth can't stand at all. He'd much rather just keep his peace and read "On the Care of the Pig", but as his young niece Jane asks him to take her fiancé George Abercrombie on as an Estate Manager. He's torn between pleasing all of his family members and trying to please his own inner child as an air gun comes into place.
This is a short and sweet amusing piece. It sounds like it would be bland, but feeling with and for Lord Emsworth totally prevents any kind of boredom. I'm not sure if this would keep up if I read more of the Blandings Castle stories, but I'd not be opposed to trying.
But first I'll be busy reading through the rest of the Penguin Modern Classics series! (Yes, I got them all!)
Music this makes me feel like listening to:
I know, I know, the book is significantly older than this, but I still get the same "old-fashioned sneaky non-caring humorous-but-not-in-a-laugh-out-loud-way" vibe from it.
= 69/100
I loved to read Wodehouse when I was a young girl. He was one of the first authors I've read in english. The way you describe it, I'm pretty sure that I would still like it.
ReplyDeleteAnd: congratulations to the complete Penguin Classics!