Right Ho, Jeeves

About the book

Bertie decides that he can handle a cluster of romantic and domestic problems without relying on Jeeves's usual direction. At Brinkley Court, Gussie Fink-Nottle's shyness, unsettled engagements, Aunt Dahlia's requirements, and the household's culinary arrangements give his ingenuity ample scope for disaster. Wodehouse builds the farce through advice that sounds plausible to its giver and produces complications for everyone expected to follow it. Bertie's narration makes that mismatch especially enjoyable, turning his self-defence into a performance of verbal invention. A school prize-giving becomes one particularly memorable test of an ill-judged intervention. The novel's intricate plotting allows apparently separate difficulties to intensify one another, while the question of who can actually interpret a situation remains central to the partnership between an enthusiastic employer and his supremely capable valet.

• Confidence and competence
• Friendship
• Comic misunderstanding

Why read it

For tightly interlocking farce told in Bertie's exuberant voice, with every attempted solution creating new work for Jeeves.

English text