tipico umorismo inglese si scatena nella storia di una scalcinata famiglia aristocratica, dove tutti i personaggi sono un po' matti, le disavventure rocambolesche ed i dialoghi da teatro dell'assurdo.
Delizioso, leggero e divertente! Heavy Weatheris the continuation of sitelinkSummer Lightning, Written within four years of each other, the two books actually encompass a fortnight of time in the life of the characters, As sad as I was to leave the fictional Blandings Castle at the end of this my third privileged visit there, I considered what it must have been like to wait for the next P.
G. plum to be published. Anything like what our generation experienced anticipating the next Harry Potter, or earlier times awaiting their next serial of the latest Dickens
I read and listened to the sitelinkBlackstone audio version of Heavy Weather.
As usual, Frederick Davidson does a masterful job, You are truly at the castle, You see and hear the characters in all their idiosyncratic nuttiness, My only regret was the books end, I did not want to leave, I found myself reviewing the castles rules of etiquette, to see if I had broken anyto not be invited back at some future date was the worst of all possible fates!
Although here on goodreads we show Summer Lightning with apublication date, it was first published in the United States onJulyby Doubleday, Doran, New York, under the title "Fish Preferred", and in the United Kingdom onJulyby Herbert Jenkins, London.
It was serialised in The Pall Mall Magazine UK between March and Augustand in Collier's US fromApril toJune,
Wodehouse at his best, The plot revolves around the publications of reminiscences of the Hon, Galahad, the marriage of Sue Brown and Ronnie Fish, and the perpetual threat of stealing Lord Emsworth's pig, Add Monty Bodkin, private investigator Mr, Pilbeam, and the everobliging butler Beach, and we have a jolly good novel, Rummy stuff. Lord Tilbury's blood pressure is rocketing skywards, The Hon. Galahad Threepwood's decision not to publish his scandalous reminiscences will lose him a small fortune, But he's one of the bulldog breed who don't readily admit defeat,
Monty Bodkin, abruptly given the boot by Lord Tilbury, has taken up his secretarial duties at Blandings Castle, home of Lord Emsworth and his adored pig, Empress of Blandings.
There, it seems the publication or otherwise of the memoirs is becoming a "cause celebre",
Three camps are forming: those who want the book published, those who want it suppressed and those who, including Monty on one side and Percy Pilbeam, private detective, on the other, who have been sent to steal it.
Whichever side they're on it's bound to involve blackmail, theft and the abduction of the Empress, . . An absolute corker. Peak Wodehouse.
sitelinkHeavy Weatherforms part of the Blandings Castle saga, It's the fourth fulllength novel to be set there, after sitelinkSomething Fresh, sitelinkLeave It to Psmithand sitelinkSummer Lightning, sitelinkHeavy Weather follows straight on from the events described in sitelinkSummer Lightning,
Whilst lacking any weepwithlaughter scenes, sitelinkHeavy Weather is as beautifully written as usual, At this stage in his career, and having already written almostbooks, sitelinkP, G. Wodehouse was incapable of writing a bad sentence, Indeed every word conveys his wit and skill, and is chock full of life reaffirming content, sitelinkHeavy Weather also marks the memorable first appearance of Monty Bodkin, who would go on to feature in two later novels
Needless to say sitelinkHeavy Weather is another superb farce: guaranteed to have you chuckling regularly and grinning from ear to ear throughout.
sitelinkHeavy Weather could only be improved if we'd actually got to discover the details of the mysterious incident of Sir Gregory Parsloe Parsloe and the prawns.
All we'll ever know is that it took place at Ascot, "the year Martingale won the Gold Cup", and it made Beach the Butler laugh so much he fell off his deck chair.
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sitelinkHeavy Weather by sitelinkP, G. Wodehouse
Acum nu știu dacă Wodehouse chiar face parte dintre autorii aceia care, scuzați anacolutul dacă leai citit o carte leai citit pe toate, sau dacă am citit prea repede o altă operă a lui șiam făcut intoleranță, dar cert este că Nori grei deasupra castelului Blandings nu ma amuzat la fel de mult ca Fulger în plină vară.
În orice caz, dat fiind că opera sa a fost atît de ridicată în slăvi că a fost și înnobilat de regina Angliei, am săi mai dau o șansă.
Peste vreo doi ani sau cam așa ceva, Many readers think that P, G. Wodehouses comic novels consist entirely of the urban, JeevesandWooster cycle, But that would be a mistake, because a significant portion of the authorsbooks are set in the Shropshire countryside, at Blandings Castle, presided over by the Ninth Earl of Emsworth and his prized back hog, Empress.
HEAVY WEATHER, mixes up greed, guilt, skullduggery, young love, and inclement summer weather with a cast that includes a London private eye, minor nobility, sweet local ingenues, caustic relatives, and old boys who are older than they used to be.
Even the sow has a role to play and of course theres an unflappable butler, Beach, Specifically, the plot centers around a manuscript that is bound to cause great embarrassment to the Earl and his aging friends, They want to keep the book from being published but newspaper magnate Lord Tilbury of London stands to make a lot of money off it and will go to great lengths to ensure its publication.
Of course, Wodehouse fans and those new to the genre are likely to appreciate in particular the authors satirical take on Interwar speech, itself a mixture of upperclass lingo, slang, and leftover Edwardianisms:
From the book:
“If my niece Myrtle cant play Chopins Funeral March in fortyeight seconds, I hope this house will be struck by lightning this very minute.
” And by what I have always thought rather an odd coincidence, it was, There was a sort of sheet of fire and a fearful crash, and the next thing I saw was Puffy crawling out from under the table, He seemed more aggrieved than frightened, I remember, He gave one reproachful look up at the ceiling, and then he said in a peevish sort of voice, “You do take a chap so dashed literally!”
In my opinion HEAVY WEATHER is not among the very best of Wodehouse but it is good enough, and reliably funny.
"Empress of Blandings stirred in her sleep and opened an eye, She thought she had heard the rustle of a cabbageleaf, and she was always ready for cabbageleafs, no matter how advanced the hour, Something came bowling across the straw, driven by the night breeze,Well, that truly completes my reading of the Blandings Castle series, Heavy Weather had somehow escaped me but I think that this sequel to Summer Lightning was a wonderful way to round things off.
It was not a cabbageleaf, only a sheet of paper with writing on it, but she ate it with no sense of disappointment, She was a philosopher and could take things as they came, Tomorrow was another day, and there would be cabbageleafs in the morning, "
Saw an omnibus containing this at a station book swap, Thought about picking it up, but I've got the other two it contained in a format I prefer, so that felt greedy, Took the very unusual for me step for a Wodehouse of ordering it, rather than waiting to happen across it, Then wondered if I hadn't been foolish, because when was the situation likely to be so obviously desperate that I'd be prepared to break glass and read the last novel I'd not read in my favourite Wodehouse series, the ultimate comfort read
And then last week happened, so it turned out that Very Recently Past Alex had planned perfectly.
The strange thing is, while this was as perfectly daft and soothing as I expected, it's also a deeply atypical Wodehouse, being a direct sequel to the previous Blandings book, Summer Lightning.
Yes, all of his work exists in a sort of continuity, known to absolutely no one as the Wodehouse Literary Universe or WLU it has the occasional glitch, such as would often need multiple creators, but nothing terribly major so Monty Bodkin, one character here, is always much the same loveable ass, but what Monty is short for can vary.
Characters who have married in one book tend to remain so, and settle down slightly, Here, though, the resolutions of the previous book are themselves the problems for other characters which kick off this one, set mere days afterwards, Not particularly opaque continuations, true come in cold and it wouldn't be like starting a fantasy epic on bookall you need to know is concisely and amusingly explained.
Still odd, though. As also the weather of the title, Blandings oppressed by a heatwave and oncoming storm instead of its usual balmy idyll, Even the way that the story turns not on impostors, such as usually infest this noble establishment, but on people being precisely who they say they are and yet being assumed to have ulterior agendas they do not.
And yet, at the same time as being an anomaly, it's also a perfect example of the Wodehouse magic the aunts and idiots, the wordplay, the ingeniously prepared misunderstandings, the precisionengineered farce.
There's a chapter here following Beach the butler which I think might be the funniest thing he ever wrote, no small achievement,
Though I really ought to add a note telling whoever does pick it up not to start with Something Fresh, the first Blandings book, where Wodehouse doesn't quite know the place yet there are cold winds, no pig, a monkey, gunplay.
Not including Sunset At Blandings, but even if that had been finished, I think the implicit but terrible blasphemy of the title would put me off.
A humorous, witty, entertaining, delightful novel, Lots of funny moments. The plot involves Galahad Threewoods threatened, reveal all, memoirs, This book follows on from Wodehouses book, Summer Lightning, The setting is Blandings Castle, England, Another story thread involves Monty Bodkin, despite his wealth, needing to hold a job down for a full year, Finally, Sue and Ronnies engagement to be married is thwarted by misunderstandings,
Here are some examples of the authors writing style:
A pictorial record of his hopes and despairs would have looked like a fever chart.
Good god, Clarence! You look like a bereaved tapeworm,
No healthy person really needs food, If people would only stick to drinking, doctors would go out of business,
This book was first published in, .