Joy in the Morning (utgåvan 2011)

A solid Jeeves & Wooster romp—would be four stars, but I'll knock off a star for a bit of casual racism. This one's bright and fluffy, filled with fancy dress balls and romantic hijinks in the countryside, and it all ties up nicely in the end. ( )

The fourth Jeeves and Wooster novel, Joy in the Morning was written by Wodehouse during the long, dark experience of World War II, during which the author was interned by the Germans and subsequently treated like an honoured guest, treatment which saw him exiled from England for the remainder of his life. This novel is unabashed escapism, and also one of the highlights of the series. ( )

This was one of the books Wodehouse wrote during the war, "about two-thirds" of it at Le Touquet in May and June 1940 whilst waiting for the Germans to decide what they were going to do with the British civilians, the rest of it in Germany after his release from internment. It was published in August 1946 in the US, June 1947 in Britain. Wodehouse and his publishers were nervous about the reception it would get after the accusations of collaboration brought against him during the war, especially in Britain, but reaction seems to have been largely positive on both sides of the Atlantic.

Despite — or perhaps because of — the troubled times it was written in, it's one of the warmest and sunniest of the Jeeves novels. For complicated reasons, Bertie has to visit Steeple Bumpleigh, not only the lair of his most fearsome aunt, Agatha, but also infested by Florence Craye, one of his deadliest ex-fiancées (she's the one who tried to get him to read Types of ethical theory), by her little brother Edwin the Boy Scout, and by the pumpkin-headed D'Arcy "Stilton" Cheesewright. To make matters worse, it appears that Stilton, wishing to assert his independence and earn a living by honest toil, has joined the Hampshire Constabulary and is now the village bobby.

There's a superbly complicated night-time garden scene that takes up the entire centre section of the book, making the last act of The Marriage of Figaro look trivially simple by comparison; there's a lot of business with costumes for a fancy dress ball, with some diamond bracelets, a porpentine, and a couple of incriminating letters; Bertie comes within a whisker of marriage and/or imprisonment, and of course joy cometh in the morning.

Maybe Bertie isn't on absolutely top form linguistically here, but there's still lots of his unique way of thinking about words and what they mean, and much of it is extremely funny.

When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six is big stuff.

My copy is the 1946 Doubleday edition, with illustrations by Paul Galdone: it's fairly obvious that Wodehouse, still being stuck in Paris, wasn't given the chance to check the pictures. Bertie is made to look disturbingly like the Duke of Windsor, whilst Jeeves is given a striped waistcoat as though he were a footman. And they are both far too old, not that we ever really know what age Bertie is meant to be. ( )

Still satisfying after all these years - reread in May - lifted my spirits as needed ( )

The same light and entertaining word play and silliness Wodehouse fans expect and love. I did think this one was a bit too easy for Jeeves to solve in the end. Uncle Percy seemed a bit too easy to manipulate. I also think that for modern readers, the idea of grown men congratulating each other for kicking a child is a bit “off” (of course the book was written over thirty years ago). Still good fun, overall. ( )