- Mass Market Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New impression edition (14 Dec 1972)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140009949
- ISBN-13: 978-0140009941
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 342,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Synopsis
A complicated chain of events is set into motion after Mrs. Chavender takes a bite of breakfast ham, declares it inedible, and sets out to complain to Duff and Trotter, one of London's most exclusive merchants.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
`Quick Service' is a Wodehouse farce set in a country estate where various competing parties are attempting to fake the theft of a oil painting for various reasons, to secure the required trust money to marry, secure employment, secure money to pay bad debt's or simply to remove an eye sore from a feature of prominence. Possibly one of the most familiar Wodehouse plots driving many a short story and being featured in a host of novels, and yet, `Quick Service' is one of the most fresh and seemingly original of all of Wodehouse's novels.
This appearance of originality is possibly due to all of the characters are totally new to the reader or, since they are all Wodehouse stock characters, that they fail to allude to the Drones or any other of Wodehouse's worlds more famous landmarks. Sally Fairmile is engaged to Lord Holbeton whom cannot marry without the approval of his trustee Mr James Duff who was previously engaged to Mrs Chavendar whom is sister-in-law to Sally's Aunt Mrs Steptoe who's husband has recently employed Joss Weatherby whom has been previously employed by both James Duff and Mrs Chavendar and who has fallen in love with Sally. It never fails to amaze me that Wodehouse didn't need to write novels as long as `War and Peace' in order to resolve all his sub plots.
And so in under two hundred and forty pages Wodehouse's musical comedy with no music is played out leaving his audience baying for more.
This appearance of originality is possibly due to all of the characters are totally new to the reader or, since they are all Wodehouse stock characters, that they fail to allude to the Drones or any other of Wodehouse's worlds more famous landmarks. Sally Fairmile is engaged to Lord Holbeton whom cannot marry without the approval of his trustee Mr James Duff who was previously engaged to Mrs Chavendar whom is sister-in-law to Sally's Aunt Mrs Steptoe who's husband has recently employed Joss Weatherby whom has been previously employed by both James Duff and Mrs Chavendar and who has fallen in love with Sally. It never fails to amaze me that Wodehouse didn't need to write novels as long as `War and Peace' in order to resolve all his sub plots.
And so in under two hundred and forty pages Wodehouse's musical comedy with no music is played out leaving his audience baying for more.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Buzzer J.P. Weatherby is fired from his post with J.B. Duff, of Duff and Trotter's Paramount Hams, and takes a post as valet to American Howard Steptoe, former boxer, former actor, and much put-upon as so many Wodehouse husbands are, and whose wife is trying to make him a gentleman. They live at Claines Hall with her sister-in-law Mrs Chavender, who was once engaged to Mr Duff. Also among the household is Sally, a poor relation who is engaged to Lord Holbeton, whose trustee is Mr Duff, and who wants his trustee to unbutton some of the needful so they can marry. Joss sees Sally and falls in love. Mr Duff wants the portrait Joss once painted of Mrs Chavender, and which now hangs in the breakfast room of Claines Hall, for a new poster campaign. Add to the mix a suspicious butler and the stage is set for a classic Wodehouse farce.
This charming novel, from 1940, contains all the classic Wodehouse elements: a country house, a hen-pecked husband, a young couple in love but - in the girl's case - engaged to the wrong person, disguises and impersonations, people who urgently need money but can't ask for it outright, and a young Buzzer of a hero. Wodehouse was a master at inventing tangled plots then, when all seems lost, untangling them so that everyone gets their just deserts, and "Quick Service" is one of his finest achievements. A witty and sunny novel set in a serpentless Eden.
This charming novel, from 1940, contains all the classic Wodehouse elements: a country house, a hen-pecked husband, a young couple in love but - in the girl's case - engaged to the wrong person, disguises and impersonations, people who urgently need money but can't ask for it outright, and a young Buzzer of a hero. Wodehouse was a master at inventing tangled plots then, when all seems lost, untangling them so that everyone gets their just deserts, and "Quick Service" is one of his finest achievements. A witty and sunny novel set in a serpentless Eden.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Your Good Health Awaits
7 Nov 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
If laughter is the best medicine, then those who read Wodehouse are destined to live until 130. Quick Service, one of Wodehouse's non-series novels, is the ultimate pick-me-up. It is a novel filled with great schemes got astray, suspicious butlers, Americans who appropriately respond to the most difficult questions by saying: "Yeah", and the most delicious sounding, toothsome Paramount Ham. This novel has threads galore, twisting and entwined, and only a Master like Wodehouse could bring it all to such a satisfying conclusion.
But the main reason to read Quick Service is to make the acquaintance of Joss Weatherby. After it was over and the brain-box slowly pondered the preceedings, it came to me that Joss is a combination of Bertie and Jeeves rolled into one. On the Bertie front, Joss is quite capable of getting himself into one scrape after another without even trying. On the Jeeves front, he is able to rescue himself from these scrapes by using his flashes of genius. Also, Joss is a total charmer. It is not hard to see why Sally (our heroine) quickly joins the Weatherby ranks. I would love to have another novel and another chance to read more Joss adventures.
Quick Service is now the third non-series Wodehouse I have read. I highly encourage those who have primarily feasted on Blandings and Jeeves to try these non-series gems. They are just as satisfying as any of the others. And we get a clear resolution of the scrapes within each novel.
So, go out there, hunt in your used bookstores, or wait until the publishers have the good sense to re-issue Quick Service. But read it! The lips will curl, the teeth will part, and the laughter will flow. And if this is medicine, your good health turly awaits!
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Short and Sweet and Funny
10 Jun 1999
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This is one of Wodehouse's many, many novels, and one of the more charming ones, due mostly to the main character, Joss Weatherby, a bright, exuberant, insanely optimistic and intelligent young artist who falls in love with Sally, a poor relation & companion to Mrs. Steptoe, a wealthy ex-American determined to enter and conquer the landed and titled social circles of England. Sally, a bright and feisty girl, is engaged to the Lord Holbeton, a spineless, intellectually-uninspired young man who sings "Trees" and whose money is held in trust by J.B. Duff, the Ham King, who is Joss' boss and was once in love with Mrs. Chavender who..... well, it's a typical Wodehouse plot, with people falling in and out of love, fortunes, inheritances held in trust getting in the way of people in love, obsessions with ham, bad indigestion, butlers going above the call of duty, paintings being stolen for nefarious purposes, all accomplished in loopy, flight-of-fancy, ingeniously light and happy prose that floats along, delightful and humorous. A Wodehouse effort other than his Jeeves and Wooster books that I really liked.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The Wit That Wins
26 Jun 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"You can never trust a writer not to make an ass of himself," P.G. Wodehouse once remarked, and novice readers who have dipped into a Jeeves or Mulliner story must be wondering how long their luck will last. How long until they come on to some dog of a novel that forever smirches the name Wodehouse? Well, as opposed to nearly anyone else you can name, all the Wodehouse exhibits I've delved into so far have all been Very Readable or above. Not a dog in the bunch, except in the good sense of the dumb chums and interminable pekes collected in the Wodehouse Bestiary.
But Quick Service was a favorite of PGW, whom you would think would know his own mind. This light novel from 1940 mixes equal parts musical comedy and whatever else his books are about, with some hysterical lines. "Oo!" said Miss Pym, pouring beer in a flutter. That's the response of the copper-coloured haired barmaid at the pub in Loose Chippings to the question posed by young artist and man-of-action, Joss Weatherby, who's madly in love with Sally Fairmile, "Isn't marriage a wonderful institution?" Miss Pym is dreaming of her betrothed, butler Sidney Chibnall, but that monosyllable is fraught with meaning, because she and Sidney are on to a gang of plotters, with Joss as suspect number one. An avid reader of mysteries, she warns Chibnall: "pretty silly you'd look if you suddenly found him murdering you in your bed."
Of course there's about a million other things happening with the cast of dozens, and this is one of the few Wodehouse romps where I can follow all the romantic embroilments. This very visual book could easily be performed on stage given the music hall bits dropped in all through it, as when Miss Pym tries to draw out a stranger with a false mustache. "You can always tell an American," she says, "but you can't tell him much. Ha ha." "Ha ha," replies the other, the gag falling flat like a card played in a deadly cat and mouse game of intrigue, as Miss Pym might say. It's just about perfect.
But Quick Service was a favorite of PGW, whom you would think would know his own mind. This light novel from 1940 mixes equal parts musical comedy and whatever else his books are about, with some hysterical lines. "Oo!" said Miss Pym, pouring beer in a flutter. That's the response of the copper-coloured haired barmaid at the pub in Loose Chippings to the question posed by young artist and man-of-action, Joss Weatherby, who's madly in love with Sally Fairmile, "Isn't marriage a wonderful institution?" Miss Pym is dreaming of her betrothed, butler Sidney Chibnall, but that monosyllable is fraught with meaning, because she and Sidney are on to a gang of plotters, with Joss as suspect number one. An avid reader of mysteries, she warns Chibnall: "pretty silly you'd look if you suddenly found him murdering you in your bed."
Of course there's about a million other things happening with the cast of dozens, and this is one of the few Wodehouse romps where I can follow all the romantic embroilments. This very visual book could easily be performed on stage given the music hall bits dropped in all through it, as when Miss Pym tries to draw out a stranger with a false mustache. "You can always tell an American," she says, "but you can't tell him much. Ha ha." "Ha ha," replies the other, the gag falling flat like a card played in a deadly cat and mouse game of intrigue, as Miss Pym might say. It's just about perfect.
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