When his employer attempts to help a lovesick friend, Jeeves must clean up the ensuing scandal, in this comic novel featuring the iconic English valet.
Bertie Wooster returns home from vacation to learn that his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle has been soliciting love advice from Jeeves, the eminently practical valet in Bertie’s employ. Afraid of being overshadowed by his own manservant, Bertie instructs Jeeves to stop assisting so that he may take up the case himself. After all, how difficult could it be to help timid Gussie win the heart of the silly and childish Madeline Bassett?
Meanwhile, Bertie’s aunt has requested his presence at her country estate to give a speech at the local grammar school. When he learns that Madeline is visiting as well, he sends Gussie in his place. But what seems like a perfect plan quickly comes apart in a comedy of disgruntled cooks, drunken speeches, gambling debts, and mistaken intentions that leave Bertie himself unexpectedly betrothed to Madeline. Now it is Bertie who requires Jeeves’s advice in this classic novel of matchmaking gone hysterically awry.
Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
Stephen Fry
The masterly episode where Gussie Fink-Nottle presents the prizes at Market Snodsbury grammar school is frequently included in collections of great comic literature and has often been described as the single funniest piece of sustained writing in the language. I would urge you, however, to head straight for a library or bookshop and get hold of the complete novel Right Ho, Jeeves, where you will encounter it fully in context and find that it leaps even more magnificently to life.
Kingsley Amis
The works of Wodehouse continue on their unique way, unmarked by the passage of time.
Lynne Truss
You should read Wodehouse when you’re well, and when you’re poorly; when you’re travelling, and when you’re not; when you’re feeling clever, and when you’re feeling utterly dim. Wodehouse always lifts your spirits, no matter how high they happen to be already.
