Leave It to Psmith
Series: Blandings Castle, Book 2; Psmith, Book 4; Drones Club, Book 4,
By: P. G. Wodehouse / Narrated By: Jonathan Cecil
Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
Blandings Castle: Book 2… But Psmith: Book 4?!? Gosh, do I now have to get those?
Except for the Tell Me What’s Next winner, this week has been devoted to second books in a series.
I loved P.G. Wodehouse’s Something Fresh so much, and I’ve been soooo tired of exploding coronavirus cases (We’re creeping up on 2,000,000 here in Texas), a contested election, and various political parties shrieking like martyred banshees, that I imMEDiately scrolled through Audible to find the second book in the Blandings Castle series. Got Leave it to Psmith in a heartbeat, and I started listening to it posthaste.
And I was delighted, as I thought I would be. Nope, can’t say I’m a Wodehouse aficionado what with this being but my second book of his, but good golly gosh: I do believe he’ll become my Go To when I want an elegantly written book with madcap characters and a light plot that is somehow verrrrrrry convoluted. Many, many threads run through the story here, just as in the first book, and they all aaaaalmost come together at the end (I s’pose not EVERYthing can be tied up!).
Here we return to the befuddled Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle feeling persecuted and put upon. His sister has yet AGAIN invited artistic creatures to spend some time with them, and this time? Oh how very disgusting: It’ll be a pair of poets, and Lord Emsworth is to spend time away from his precious garden to, egad! interact with them.
Which leads us to the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Emsworth’s feckless son, trying to get a thousand pounds outta his uncle… who’s trying to get three thousand pounds outta his wife, Emsworth’s sister. And a discussion leads to an intricate plot to steal a verrrry valuable necklace to procure the funds for these fellows.
Enter the immaculate and monocle-sporting Psmith (It was Smith, but that is sooooo prosaic, add the P, make it silent like in psychic or ptarmigan, and he’s good to go) who has decided he will have NOTHING more to do with FISH, having spent the last yeeeears working with fish for his uncle. He places an ad in the newspaper stating he will do ANYthing anytime for anyone… as long as it has nothing to do with FISH, and so he becomes the Hon. Freddie’s Go To.
After a typical Wodehouse/Lord Emsworth debacle, somehow Psmith takes over and doesn’t quite correct Emsworth when Emsworth believes him to be the invited poet (It’s like this see: Psmith saw one Eve Halliday in the rain, swiped an umbrella for her—chivalry, don’t you know—saw her again at an employment bureau, then found out she was going to be taking a job at Blandings… so it MUST be True Love and what the Fates have in store for him). And the necklace? Well, helping Freddie and his uncle will be helping his best friend… I know I know, I can’t do the plot justice.
Suffice it to say that, once again, there are convoluted hijinks going on at the Castle, plenty of near misses, plus a pair of con artists join the party. Psmith foils them all, even tho’ Emsworth’s UBER-efficient secretary, Baxter, is onto him. That Baxter has a thing about bright yellow pajamas and throwing flower pots through windows, almost killing Emsworth? Well, that just adds to the many many things going on, all at once.
And it’s all hiLARious. Psmith never speaks, but is instead a master of elocution, urbane, unruffled, even if someone is pointing a gun at him. Even if Baxter is flipping out because a flowerpot was thrown at HIM. Sooo smooth, even when Eve is pitching a fit at him because the supposed poet is actually a great big ol’ heinous turd who was dastardly to his wife (Uh-oh). Even when the Hon. Freddie Threepwood is spazzing at him cuz he’s been watching too many detective moving pictures where things do NOT go well for the thief.
All this as written in Wodehouse’s inimitable style. If Psmith is a master of words? Well, Wodehouse is Psmith x 10! If Psmith can parse a phrase and leave me laughing? Wodehouse is that x 10 also! I was smiling pretty much through the whole Listen.
Which brings me to something quite sorrowful: Jonathan Cecil does NOT narrate any more of the books in the series, and I dunno what I’m gonna do. Cecil, tho’ he makes his American con artist sound like a dumb Rodney Dangerfield (Know him? or is that waaaay before y’all’s time?), does everyone, esPECially Psmith, Baxter, and Lord Emsworth so well. He makes Emsworth lovably flighty; makes Baxter suitably peevish; and Psmith? Oh my heavens: He voices his patronizing yet humor-filled disdain in such a delightful manner.
It bears saying again: I smiled through this entire book. And I can’t wait to find an excuse to get to the next in the series, even tho’ Amazon says that this is the end of the Psmith Series, like he’s had three adventures prior to making his presence known at Blandings Castle. So I’ll be sad to see him go; and I’ll DEFinitely be sad to listen to Wodehouse’s winding sentences rolling off somebody NOT Jonathan Cecil’s tongue. Booooo!
Well, I guess one makes do.
Me? Like I said: I’ll be doing some pretty heavy cogitating on just exACTly how I can work in Book 3 of the series. What WILL the befuddled Lord Emsworth mess up next time? Who WILL the feckless Hon. Freddie Threepwood be proposing marriage to next time?
Besides which: I got Book 9 on sale through Chirpbooks, and there’s a pig in it… I MUST know how she got there!!!
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