The Girl in Blue

The Girl in Blue
P. G. Wodehouse

On Jury Duty, a political cartoonist falls in love with an airline stewardess while still betrothed to another woman. In the offices of a large retail facility, a reputable lawyer learns that, to avoid any sort of lawsuit on the part of his sister, he must take her out of the country immediately to keep her potentially kleptomaniac hands out of trouble. In London, another lawyer's day cannot get any better as he has gotten his hands on a family heirloom that had evaded him for years and his brother struggles to pay for the upkeep of their ancestral home. Each oblivious and in their own world, they are all about to find out how small a world it is after all.

Introduced to Wodehouse by an impulsive purchase of the Jeeves and Wooster television series by my roomie, I immediately fell in love. True, this is an [amazing] adaptation of the author as portrayed by the [brilliant] Fry and Laurie, but if the basis of the stories was anything akin to the madcap glory of the show, there was no room for let down. To be sure, then, that there was no let down. I picked up The Girl in Blue shortly after the aforementioned roomie purchased a substantial collection [single volume, which I detest on the whole] of Jeeves and Wooster reading material, and quickly realized that, while I have no need to buy the famed dandy and valet's stories, I had every reason to buy anything else by Wodehouse. I found myself several pages in whilst still sitting on the stepstool in the store. No chance was there of me not buying it, despite my proclaimed austerity measures. Shortly thereafter, I had a bit of a roadtrip to New Jersey where I was, unsurprisingly, the only early riser. The book was finished on day two.

It made me sad.

Every ounce of madcap fun, wit and cleverness found in the well-loved television series was represented in The Girl in Blue. Though it was in no way a mysery novel, the number of storylines that are involved give it an air of intricacy that a mystery novelist should dream of attaining. And yet, at the same time, there was no sensation of being overwhelmed by the numerous characters and locations. Each person was their own and could not readily be mistaken for another. The locations were well defined and because of this, though the characters were not always even in the same country, the only confusion to be had was to be found on the page when the chaos began.

If Shakespeare ever taught me anything, it was to always explicitly use names when talking to and about people.

If Wodehouse has taught me anything, it is to risk the offense and ask for information up front and save yourself the misadventures of assumptions.

And just so you know, I'd rather read Wodehouse over Shakespeare anyday.

Quite enjoyable, I look foward to more of the stuff.