The Jeeves Collection, Vol 1 by P G Wodehouse
| The Jeeves Collection, Vol 1 by P G Wodehouse | |
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| Category: Humour | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: Forty hours of Stephen Fry narrating Jeeves and Wooster. That's probably all you need to know to make up your mind. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: -/40h37m | Date: December 2020 |
| Publisher: Audible | |
| ISBN: | |
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In my youth, I wasn't fond of PG Wodehouse: I've never been keen on upper-class twits and I was greedy. I wanted everything: I required brilliant plots, exceptional characters and laugh-out-loud humour. Age brought the realisation that you have to compromise and I came back to Wodehouse with a different mindset. The humour is gentle and subtle: there's never any malice in it. The characterisation is two-dimensional where women are concerned: there's little in between old gorgons (Aunt Agatha, we're looking at you...) and young schemers such as Honoria Glossop. The plots are superficial but gently engaging. They're fun - and the writing is exquisite.
It's said that in difficult times readers turn to Jane Austen, as I did recently, but where do you go when you've finished that and The Complete Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope? Well, I went to Wodehouse. Stephen Fry narrates The Inimitable Jeeves, Carry On, Jeeves, Right-Ho, Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters and Joy in the Morning. It's a good selection and you get forty hours of listening time and as this is volume one we can expect more to come.
I'm not going to go into great detail about the plots and the characters. Bertie Wooster thinks of himself as a sensitive club man and boulevardier but Jeeves is probably closer to the mark when he describes him as mentally negligible. The full range of Jeeves and Wooster stories were published between 1915 and 1974 but the stories in this collection were all published in the years between the two world wars with the exception of Joy in the Morning which dates from 1946. Bertie Wooster's main occupation is being Bertie. He lacks employment, but seemingly, not money. Jeeves is his valet - or gentleman's gentleman - but Wooster points out that he can buttle with the best of them.
It's a collection to dip into as the mood takes you: when listened to as a whole they can become a little samey. Stephen Fry narrates well although he is far better with the male voices. This isn't quite the disadvantage it might seem: Wodehouse is not strong on female characters. You could almost believe that he doesn't particularly like them. You read Wodehouse for the pleasure of his writing, which is exquisite: occasionally I found myself reversing to listen to a passage again, just for the pleasure of it.
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