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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage, 19 Jan 2007
A fascinating thing about P. G. Wodehouse is how very early on it was all in place. This was published in 1917 but is absolute vintage, top drawer Wodehouse - Plum's Roaring Twenties, with its millionaires and night clubs, is already in full swing.
The plot is of an ingenious complexity even by the standards of the master of ingenious complexity (at one point even the hero has to use a pencil and sheet of paper to work out where he stands) I have never read a book before where the lead character has to impersonate Himself, a wonderful conceit.
The whole thing is one big delight, P G Wodehouse revelling in the details of the Good Life on both sides of the Atlantic (don't buy that stuff about Wodehouse `showing up the hypocrisy of the upper classes' etc) There is a gallery of memorable characters as one would expect, but the fearsome feminist Private Detective, snarling through gritted teeth and reading Schopenhauer, has to be one of the most memorable characters in fiction full stop.
And there is a delightful, distinctly unsoppy Romance at the heart of it.
That much overused term feel-good could have been coined with Wodehouse in mind, and he is the one to turn to when the World seems down.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid Wodehouse, 21 Jan 2006
This is well written, entertaining Wodehouse with much to enjoy. While not as laugh out load funny as his more English based stories and characters definitely not in the same league as Psmith or Wooster for example), there is still much to recommend it. And Wodehouse not at his best is still miles ahead of most of his peers.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Wodehouse's finest, 28 May 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Piccadilly Jim (Penguin Books) (Mass Market Paperback)
Picadilly Jim is one of the best, if not the best light novel(Non Jeeves and wooster, and non Blandings) Wodehouse ever wrote. Jimmy Crocker's life was just one drunken brawl after another. Until his Aunt Nesta decides to bring him to america to reform him. Unfortunately, on the way there, he meets the girl of his dreams, and decides to reform himself. A highly complicated plot, involving the threat of being blown up, and a wonderful piece of Wodehouse twisted logic, has Jim pretending to be himself. Also the sins of his past come back to haunt him, as he is in pirsuit of the girl he loves. With conmen, thieves, and impostors, this is one wodehouse not even the staunchest wodehouse hater can afford to miss.
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