- Paperback: 576 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Omnibus ed edition (4 Nov 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140173595
- ISBN-13: 978-0140173598
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 366,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
This "Blandings" omnibus, starring the further exploits of the Earl of Emsworth and his acquaintances, contains "Pigs with Wings", "Full Moon" and "Service With a Smile".
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
This book is probably a dream come true for most Wodehouse fans - three hilarious Blandings novels all in the same book. All the standard Blandings characters are there - Clarence, Earl of Emsworth, Lady Hermione Wedge and her daughter Veronica, Lady Constance Keeble and her brother Galahad, and of course, the only truly sane one, the Empress of Blandings. Highly recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Service with a Smile is my second favorite of the P.G. Wodehouse books about the daffy doings at Blandings Castle, and is exceeded only by Pigs Have Wings.
If you have read any of the P.G. Wodehouse books about Blandings Castle, you know that the proprietor, Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, is a simple man who simply wants to be left alone to contemplate his prize-winning pig, The Empress of Blandings, who has won the silver prize three years running in the fat pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. But he is beset by sisters who want to organize his life . . . and that of everyone else. The most frequently present of these sisters is Lady Constance Keeble, who is in residence in this book.
Lady Constance is a widow and has her eye on a wealthy American, James Schoonmaker, whose daughter, Myra, has been brought to Blandings Castle by Lady Constance to keep Myra from marrying a curate, a poor but honest man. Lady Constance has no truck with poor people and she's confident that James Schoonmaker would feel the same way.
The castle also contains Clarence's secretary, Lavender Briggs, who desperately wants to start up her own typing bureau but lacks capital; the Duke of Dunstable, who thinks everyone else is potty and wants to save a penny wherever he can; and Clarence's grandson, George, who has a new movie camera from his grandfather. All will play important roles in the developing plot.
The catalyst for this marvelous story is the effervescent Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham. As an old friend of the Schoonmakers, Freddie decides to bring the young people together in holy matrimony. To further this course, Freddie introduces the curate, one Bill Bailey (about whom many song jokes follow), into the castle as a Brazilian business man who has something to do with Brazil nuts.
Freddie's plot is soon foiled though when Dunstable decides to grab the Empress by hook or by crook and Bill Bailey is blackmailed to help. How will the young lovers be brought together?
Ickenham is a less scrupulous version of Galahad Threepwood, Clarence's younger brother, who was such a fixture in the old Pelican Club. He sees fatheaded rich men as being likely sources of capital for poor, but deserving younger people. He also believes in love and soon has two sets of young lovers to sort out. He has a strategic advantage in this plot in that his reputation precedes him and all those in trouble quickly come to seek his counsel. In the process, that allows Freddie to pull the strings almost as well as the fairies do in some of Shakespeare's lightest comedies.
Like all of the best Wodehouse stories, this one positively reeks with humorous names (such as George Cyril Wellbeloved, Clarence's pig man), class humor (fat-headed upper class types being shorn), irony (the simple is exalted over the complex and pretentious) and never-ending humorous confrontations and contretemps.
Save this book for the next time you need cheering up. It's a perfect tonic!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Of all authors, P.G. Wodehouse is perhaps the most guilty of re-cycling his plot devices. Visiting a country house under an alias, writing a scandalous memoir, weaselling out of an engagement or, of course, stealing or nobbling a pig, all occur so frequently in Wodehouse plotlines that stories can seem to merge together. As faults go it isn't the worst. Even Jane Austen wasn't afraid to lift the odd bit of a situation from book to book, though she never managed to work pig-nobbling into any. For an author of the calibre of, say, Jeffrey Archer it would be a crippling flaw but for a P.G. Wodehouse it doesn't matter a jot.
Every Story, no matter how reminiscent the plot, is a joy to read, and every character, from the stream of slightly defective pig-men to the ultimate, dapper, man-about-town Sir Galahad Threepwood, is perfectly crafted and described. Every one has its chuckle-out-loud moment and when not laughing you're smiling.
Wodehouse is the ultimate test of the "Marmite theorem": if you love one of his books you will love them all, dislike one (foul creature that you are) and you need never visit another. If you love P. G. W., buy this book - and then all the others.
Every Story, no matter how reminiscent the plot, is a joy to read, and every character, from the stream of slightly defective pig-men to the ultimate, dapper, man-about-town Sir Galahad Threepwood, is perfectly crafted and described. Every one has its chuckle-out-loud moment and when not laughing you're smiling.
Wodehouse is the ultimate test of the "Marmite theorem": if you love one of his books you will love them all, dislike one (foul creature that you are) and you need never visit another. If you love P. G. W., buy this book - and then all the others.
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