- Faulks, Sebastian.
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells.
London: Hutchinson, 2013.
ISBN 978-0-09-195404-8.
-
As a fan of P. G. Wodehouse
ever since I started reading his work in the 1970s, and having read every
single Jeeves
and Wooster
story, it was with some trepidation that I picked up this novel,
the first Jeeves and Wooster story since
Aunts
Aren't Gentlemen, published in 1974, a year before Wodehouse's
death. This book, published with the permission of the Wodehouse estate,
is described by the author as a tribute to P. G. Wodehouse which he hopes
will encourage readers to discover the work of the master.
The author notes that, while remaining true to the characters of Jeeves
and Wooster and the ambience of the stories, he did not attempt to mimic
Wodehouse's style. Notwithstanding, to this reader, the result is so close
to that of Wodehouse that if you dropped it into a Wodehouse collection
unlabelled, I suspect few readers would find anything discordant.
Faulks's Jeeves seems to use more jaw-breaking words than I recall
Wodehouse's, but that's about it. Apart from Jeeves and Wooster, none of the
regular characters who populate Wodehouse's stories appear on stage here.
We hear of members of the
Drones, the terrifying
Aunt Agatha, and
others, and mentions of previous episodes involving them, but all of the
other dramatis personæ are new.
On holiday in the south of France, Bertie Wooster makes the acquaintance
of Georgiana Meadowes, a copy editor for a London publisher having escaped
the metropolis to finish marking up a manuscript. Bertie is immediately
smitten, being impressed by Georgiana's beauty, brains, and wit, albeit
less so with her driving (“To say she drove in the French fashion would
be to cast a slur on those fine people.”). Upon his return to London,
Bertie soon reads that Georgiana has become engaged to a travel writer she
mentioned her family urging her to marry. Meanwhile, one of Bertie's
best friends, “Woody” Beeching, confides his own problem with
the fairer sex. His fiancée has broken off the engagement because
her parents, the Hackwoods, need their daughter to marry into wealth to save
the family seat, at risk of being sold. Before long, Bertie discovers that
the matrimonial plans of Georgiana and Woody are linked in a subtle but
inflexible way, and that a delicate hand, acting with nuance, will be
needed to assure all ends well.
Evidently, a job crying out for the attention of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster!
Into the fray Jeeves and Wooster go, and before long a quintessentially
Wodehousean series of impostures, misadventures, misdirections, eccentric
characters, disasters at the dinner table, and carefully crafted stratagems
gone horribly awry ensue. If you are not acquainted with that
game
which the English, not being a very spiritual people, invented to
give them some idea of eternity
(G. B. Shaw), you may want to review the rules before reading chapter 7.
Doubtless some Wodehouse fans will consider any author's bringing Jeeves
and Wooster back to life a sacrilege, but this fan simply relished the
opportunity to meet them again in a new adventure which is entirely
consistent with the Wodehouse canon and characters. I would have been
dismayed had this been a parody or some “transgressive” despoilation
of the innocent world these characters inhabit. Instead we have a
thoroughly enjoyable romp in which the prodigious brain of Jeeves once
again saves the day.
The U.K. edition is linked above.
U.S. and worldwide Kindle editions
are available.
January 2014 