Uncover Summer Lightning Depicted By P.G. Wodehouse Available In Physical Edition

usually love PG's books and find them hilarious but this one is in two camps, The first twothirds of the book is in the usual PG style, funny, characters lively, the usual aliases being employed and girls flitting from one man to another and not knowing who they are in love with.
In addition there is the mystery of Lord Emsworth's pig, the Empress of Blandings, Then the final third drags terribly, there is not as much characterisation, few funny incidents and too much narrative with seemingly little connection to what has gone before and the Empress disappears altogether! Indeed, unlike other PG books I have read, I was glad when it was over and I could put it down.


All the best parts come in the first twothirds, as I have said, and it begins with the Honourable Galahad Threepwood, Gally for short and Lord Emsworth's brother, deciding to write his memoirs, which would be a tellall about the local gentry, particularly Emsworth's neighbour Sir Gregory ParsloeParsloe.
So he wants to do all he can to stop publication, Hugo Carmody and Ronald Fish are two lovestruck young men who fancy Millicent, Emsworth's daughter, and Sue Brown, a chorus girl, and in true Wodehosue tradition they get attached to the wrong girl.


In addition there is a doubledealing private detective involved in trying to trace the stolen Empress of Blandings and also trying to secure the manuscript memoirs a conflict of interests if ever there was one! Then Sue Brown arrives at Blandings Castle pretending to be a wealthy heiress so things get even more complicated.
All of which leads to fun and games,

And then, after those heavy going passages, all is revealed and a happy ending ensues,


AS THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY is being committed at sunny Blandings Castle



Its most precious occupant has been stolen



and the list of suspects is ever ongoing.


Trust P. G. Wodehouse to bring you sun and laughter into your life when you need it the most, sitelinkMuch Ado About Nothing amp sitelinkThe Comedy of Errors á lá the inimitable P, G. Wodehouse with thwarted lovers, missing pigs, scandalmanuscriptstobestolen, set in the lovely Blandings Castle as the background and all this in hysterically funny and captivating Wodehouseprose, Cu personaje şi intrigi dense şi colorate, fir epic bogat şi mult dialog, acest volum scris aproape în întregime în manieră dramaturgică mia dat senzaţia, încă de la prima pagină, că îl citesc pe Moliere.

Lectură uşoară şi amuzantă, ideală pentru vacanţă, De citit şi celelalte volume din serie, Summer Lightning is one of Wodehouse's Blandings Castle series, a series which is slowly replacing Jeeves amp Wooster in my affections,

Most of the stories in the Blandings Castle series use the same plot devices: a broken engagement or two, an imposter or two, and the kidnapping of Lord Emsworth's pig, the Empress of Blandings.
Summer Lightning is no different, Wodehouse gets a lot of mileage out of the old formula but it never fails,

Hugo Carmody and Ronnie Fish both end up on the outs with their ladies, Uncle Galahad is at Blandings writing his memoirs, Lady Constance wants the terribly efficient Baxter back as Emsworth's secretary, When the Empress turns up missing, Percy Pilbeam ends up on the case,

If you like Wodehouse, you'll love Summer Lightning, If you don't, get your act together, You probably spend most of your time beating up old women or something, A humorous, entertaining, delightful read about Galahad Threepwoods threatened reveal all memoirs, a stolen pig and two love trysts,

Lord Emsworth is his doddery self and the ex secretary, nosey parker Baxter provides some slapstick comic relief,

P. G. Wodehouse fans will enjoy this book,

Here are some amusing quotes from the novel:
She looked like something that might have occurred to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.

When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.

He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow,
Nature seems to unbutton its waistcoat and put its feet up, A joy to read and chortle along, The hapless jealous Ronnie in love with the delightful Sue Brown, the chorus girl with the heart of gold, Galahad Threepwood with his explosive reminiscences threatening Sir Gregory ParsloeParsloe career in politics, Clarence with the love of his life the Empress, Throw in Pilbeam a detective with no scruples and Carmody and Millicent,

Combined we have a farce with hilarity, Beach the butler trying to do the right thing, Efficient Baxter not being efficient, The Empress is stolen several times to garner the goodwill of Lord Elmsworth, We have a castle full of imposters, deception around every corner as well as lovers misconstruing innocent activities, Sit back, read and laugh, For less than the price of a cup of English tea:

Each book that PG writes, proffers hours and hours of delightful entertainment,

This accomplished and sophisticated writer always delivers,

Highbrow, erudite comedic writing is difficult to summit even once,

And yet, Mr, Wodehouse is a singular Sherpa in this vocation,

A tip of my bowler to you, again, sir, Una lettura che mi ha fatto bene, Leggera, briosa, ricca di vicessitudini e comicità,
Leggerò sicuramente altro di Wodehouse, Pigs are cool, and Wodehouse is hilarious, Need a laugh during the pandemic You got a book full right here, Nothing to add to my review of sitelinkGalahad at Blandings, Wodehouse was a maestro without parallel,

Among later writers, Kyril Bonfiglioli is notable, though his world is less idyllic than Wodehouse's, Tom Sharpe, of course, is a bit different from Wodehouse as well, These two were less consistent than Wodehouse,

All of them put together have done so much to improve health outcomes in the world, . .

"The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty troubles, "

The essence of Wodehouse as described by the man himself, Even more like A Midsummer Night's Dream fortified with extra McGuffins than all the other Wodehouses I've read so far, Would not be surprised if that was the intention here,

It seems my enjoyment of the Blandings stories is partly dependent on the characters of the usually young people staying at the house and causing havoc.
sitelinkSomething Fresh remains my favourite of the novels so far because I liked Ashe and Joan so much nor was anyone else notably objectionable, Ronald Overbury Fish, however, is an utter arse, Given his name, I was rather tempted to use the other word, making a badtaste pun that one is really not supposed to but it would be rather out of keeping with Wodehouse, never mind potentially attract irate commenters for no worthwhile reason.
Besides, in the peculiar unspoken gradations of meaning attached to swearwords, I'm not sure it quite suits him, But yes, Ronnie Fish has no notable redeeming qualities, is lazy, violent, dishonest, unattractive, and above all has a serious jealousy problem that meant I was sincerely hoping he did not get married in the end.
I thought this was probably irredeemable in, when Freud hadn't so much as arrived in London yet, and a world in which young men usually possessed of a crust of calm detachment from all human emotion, built up by years of Eton and Cambridge would even consider therapy was many decades away.
His exgirlfriend travels hundreds of miles to his house, uninvited, after being dumped, whilst pretending to be someone else which is really not on either, but otherwise she basically is a likeable and civilised individual, if deluded in wanting to marry this awful man, whose relatives have the decency to warn her.
His cousin Millicent is worryingly jealous too, but I found her likeable otherwise it was her reading Schopenhauer whilst brokenhearted that sealed it and at least she displays no inclination to fly off the handle and punch people.

I am relieved to see that Ronnie does not appear in many other books, In the second half he was mostly offscreen which made the rest more enjoyable, with a return of the feelings of warmth and cosiness and good humour that are the point of these books.
Still, I was increasingly dismayed by the misunderstanding and mistrust heaped on poor Baxter, I suspect, that rather like my tendency to feel sorry for Basil Fawlty and hope he would win occasionally, one isn't supposed to feel this way, . . Regardless, I do have some strange affection for the rest of the regulars, in whom attributes that would surely be trying in person somehow become loveable eccentricities on the page, and the idyllic setting is undoubtedly a character in itself.
I would love a Blandings autumn or winter though Wodehouse clearly loved his endless summers, but having got through several in succession, as a fan of the colder, darkening months perhaps such people did not exist in draughty castles of the precentral heating era I am starting to find these summers like my equivalent of the Narnian winter.
. . The Blandings Castle books are often overshadowed by the more popular Jeeves and Wooster series, but deserve a visit in their own right, As is true of most Wodehouse, the zaniest of machinations fail, then succeed, true love wins in the end, and the aristocracy bumble their way through life saved only by the wisdom from the service class.
Very enjoyable characters and strong writing throughout, Very, very funny. In this installment of the Blandings Castle series, someone has kidnapped the Empress! Theth Earl of Emsforth is beside himself, as he loves no one or nothing in life as much as his prized pig.
Who could have done such a thing! Is it his conniving nephew, for whom the Earl controls the purse strings His faithful butler, Beach, who has a gambling problem His shifty neighbor, Lord Gegory ParsloeParsloe, whose own pig competes with the Empress for local glory His bitter exsecretary, the Efficient Baxter, out for revenge against the Earl Or does it have something to do with the memoir his brother is writing, which will cause a tsunami of scandal among the titled class

Everyone seems to have a motive but the real story is more complicated than the Earl can imagine, involving two sets of starcrossed lovers and a shady private investigator from London.
Its all silly and hilarious and I never wanted it to end,

I thought I couldn't love anything more than Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves stories but I have to say the two Blandings Castle novels I've read so far in the list I found online, this one wasbut here on Goodreads it's listed asare even more up my alley.
Blandings is like Downton Abbey with wacky characters and much better plotting, Il primo libro che leggo di P, G. Wodehouse, autore di cui ho sentito parlare benissimo e malissimo anche se, invero, con maggior peso della prima fazione, Per questo, forse, lo avevo accantonato fino ad ora,

Poi la voglia di leggerezza mi ha spinto a leggere questo libro, il primo che mi è capitato tra le mani e che è anche uno dei primi scritti da lui.


Siamo nel castello di Blandings giusto per individuare la serie a cui appartiene, popolato da tanti personaggi che sono delle caricature viventi viventi per modo di dire, eh in un tipico ambiente nobiliare inglese con la sua corte di figure di contorno.


Si ride e si sorride, in una nuvola di leggerezza, con il susseguirsi dei colpi di scena, senza emozioni eccessive, ma con arguzia, humor ed un finale piacevole.


Dalla prefazione di Fruttero amp Lucentini riporto:

Linsulto più sferzante che lintelligencija euroamericana poteva rivolgere a uno scrittore era, fino a pochi anni fa, di essere “consolatorio”, e, se si prende per buono un simile criterio, non cè dubbio che lopera di Wodehouse abbia rappresentato per milioni di lettori una consolazione travolgente.
Come le comiche di Chaplin e della coppia Laurel amp Hardy,
E la consolazione che offre la comicità pura, soddisfacendo un bisogno da sempre “primario” sulla Terra, anche se non figura ufficialmente tra i Diritti dellUomo ma lomissione è significativa.


Da leggere per rilassarsi, sconsigliato a chi cerca emozioni forti,

,arrotondate allegramente. .