Carry On, Jeeves is a set of ten short stories surrounding, well, Wooster and Jeeves. This is the book where Wodehouse gives the history of Jeeves entering Wooster’s employment. And a pretty expected explanation of Wooster’s never ending income. For a bit of a spoiler, it’s the hangover-buster drink of Jeeves that Wooster is swept of his feet with. While in the TV series of Wooster and Jeeves, Jeeves keeps the recipe a secret, in the book he spills it out without any hesitation.
The stories themselves are not as top grade as a full blown Jeeves novel. Some of the stories are pretty tame actually. And Jeeves, as Wooster points out time and again, is not at the top of his usual form. He does come to the aid of the crisis in most of the cases, but he takes an unusual amount of time, is frequently displeased with his master, and in a couple of cases actually just lets things go on! Now that’s not like good old Jeeves at all! And in one of the stories, one of Wooster’s friend really bites the dust, so to speak. Now what is a Wodehouse story without an overall happy ending? Well, it is still a happy ending, but not as happy as I’d want it to be.
The writing is funny as usual; which is the biggest selling point of any Wodehouse book for me. I just have to pick up a book, start reading, and all my worries melt away as those brilliantly phrased dialogues keep coming one after another. I once started out on a project of jotting down memorable quotes from Wodehouse books, and discovered that I was jotting down every alternate sentence. So I chucked it and started collecting his books.
So maybe story-wise this book is not up to the really high Wodehouse standards. But entertainment wise, it still is.
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