Tag: Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves

by P.G. Wodehouse (Doubleday, Doran, 1930)

audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil (Blackstone, 2011)

Book cover: “Very Good, Jeeves” by P.G. Wodehouse (Doubleday, Doran, 1930); audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil (Blackstone, 2011)

Wodehouse give the impression he could dash off a Jeeves & Wooster story between breakfast and elevenses, and would happily do so should ever he feel himself wanting for joie de vivre. Jonathan Cecil gives perfect voice to the frivolous restorative fizz.

Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

by Ben Schott (Little, Brown and Company, 2020); audiobook read by Daniel Ings (Hachette, 2020)

Book cover: “Jeeves and the Leap of Faith” by Ben Schott (Little, Brown and Company, 2020); audiobook read by Daniel Ings (Hachette, 2020)

An earnest but ultimately pallid homage. The characters are in keeping, the plot suitably entangled. But while conscientious, Schott’s pastiche lacks the trenchant delivery with which Wodehouse chivvied his characters towards the denouement (here lacking). Ings’s audiobook reading is rather too restrained.

Jeeves and the King of Clubs

Jeeves and the King of Clubs

by Ben Schott (Hutchinson, 2018); audiobook read by James Lance (Bolinda, 2018)

Schott_Jeeves King Clubs

Schott faithfully dovetails his plot threads and recaptures much of Wodehouse’s loquacity, albeit without quite the same vim of expression or uproarious knack for aperçus. The world is right but the reading seems off. It really needed Hugh Laurie and/or Stephen Fry.

 

 

Jeeves in the Offing

Jeeves in the Offing

by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1960); audiobook read by Ian Carmichael (Chivers, 1990)

Wodehouse_Jeeves in the Offing

‘In the Offing’ is an apt title, for the valet Jeeves remains all but absent from this novel, leaving Bertie Wooster to thrive on his own initiative and witterings, thwarted less by inherent haplessness than by the tangled Gordian knot of circumstance.

 

 

The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves

by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1923); audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil (BBC, 1990/2009)

Wodehouse_The Inimitable Jeeves

This fix-up novel brings together eleven Jeeves & Wooster short stories, the linking thread of which is Bertie’s friend Bingo Little, whose compulsive falling in love brings endless trouble to his old school chum. Jonathan Cecil’s reading lends zest to the mishaps.

 

 

Carry On, Jeeves

Carry On, Jeeves

by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1925); audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil (1991)

Wodehouse_Carry On Jeeves

This collection of short stories forms the perfect introduction to one of literature’s great characters: the valet Jeeves, who carries himself with a reserved brand of Holmesian all-knowingness, manipulates social situations and takes on a near omnipotence in saving Bertie Wooster’s bacon.

 

 

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