Three Men and a Maid, by PG Wodehouse
The Book
This British comedy follows the lives of Sam Marlowe, his cousin Eustace Hignett, Eustace's ex-fiancée Wilhemennia "Billie" Bennet, and Billie's father's choice for her Bream Mortimer. All four of them cross the Atlantic Ocean in the same steamship. Eustace stays below, too seasick to interact with Bream, Billie, Bille's friend Jean, and Sam. Which works out fine. Same and Billie meet when her dog, a Pekingese bites Sam. Once Sam gets her name, he is shocked to find out she is Eustace's ex-fiancée. After a series of misunderstandings, Sam and Billie get engaged on the boat. All comes out, and Billie changes her mind when Eustace is persuaded to play the piano for Sam's act on the boat's amatuer show. It goes badly. Billie breaks up with Sam, Eustace gets sick drawing the interest of Jean, but he feels too badly to do anything about it. Bream thinks Billie will finally give up chasing after new guys and settle down with him, and Sam is heartbroken and goes to the seaside to recover.
Once in England, Eustace schemes to spend more time with Billie's friend, even if it means spending time with Billie. He lets out his mother's house, without her knowledge, to Billie and Bream's fathers. When the fathers start driving each other crazy, Eustace encourages Sam to enter his dad's law firm to prevent Sam's dad from telling Eustace's mom the crazy thing Eustace has done. And also, Eustace hopes to buy more time to get married before his mother can stop him.
Sam agrees. A whole bunch of crazy commotion later and the book ends with the people who deserve each other, together.
My Thoughts
This is classic British absurdist comedy as practiced by a legend in the field. Easy to read, the plot itself is pretty straight forward and easy to guess. But that's not why I'm reading a comedy, it's to see the hijinks his characters get up to, and boy do they deliver. Like most comedies, Wodehouse uses exaggeration, wit, and upending social conventions to pass commentary on the society he lives in. It is well done. I get the British flavor, I get the commentary (perhaps it was reading through all of those Agatha Christies from the same era), and I loved how absurd the whole venture was.
Reading a master of whatever genre always conveys some lessons. Wodehouse and his comedy shows how a predictable plot can be rendered fun, memorable, and unique by having a strong voice and the wit to hang a lantern on your narrative if you can figure out how to make it delightful. I wish I could do it a third as well as he does, it would go a long way to making my own novels more fun.
How Much My Library Card Saved Me
I downloaded the free version of this book onto my Kindle app. As it is in the public domain, Project Gutenberg had a copy available on Amazon. There is a version available from my library, and I'm going to try downloading it soon. I just wanted to get this read before my podcast interview on Wodehousekeeping podcast. (Hi Ian, what a great name for your podcast.) You can catch me there! As this was a digital book, and in my collection, I was free to highlight as much stuff as I wanted. As it cost me nothing, that is the number I will go with.
This Book $0.00
Library Items Reviewed This Year $66.95
Private Books
This Book $00.00
Total of Private Books $52.75
Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $122.70
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