1960s Wodehouse- meaning a bit of a rehash, but still most entertaining and quick read. ( )

I'm not quite sure why, but this has always been one of my favourite late-period Wodehouse novels. It doesn't have any of his big-name serial characters in it, and there's no really spectacular set-piece, but it is one of a handful of novels set in the idyllic London suburban paradise of Valley Fields, which is of course based on Wodehouse's memories of Dulwich where he was at school around the turn of the century, and where he lived during his brief career as a trainee bank official.

Naturally, there is nothing in his picture of the three adjoining suburban villas — Peacehaven, Castlewood, and The Nook — that even remotely suggests that we might be in the era between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. This is a prelapsarian world, without a hint of sex, drugs or rock and roll, in which even the serpents are still benign, and life is all about borrowing lawn-mowers over the garden fence.

We have the usual immaculately-constructed plot involving — besides the inevitable pair of young lovers — an Old Etonian police constable, a local historian who breeds rabbits, a Romantic Novelist who ill-advisedly wants to break into serious literature, an Extra Waiter with a basket of snakes, and three crooks who are trying to recover some stolen jewellery that's been stashed on top of the wardrobe in Castlewood. Needless to say, all of these are brought together in a single chaotic evening that hilariously resolves (almost) all the problems in the plot.

Re-reading, I particularly enjoyed the character of Leila Yorke (née Lizzie Binns), the robust author of romantic fiction. She's clearly a kind of tongue-in-cheek self-portrait of Wodehouse, with a lot of entertaining little quips about the perils of being a well-known author of "trash".

(This was originally published as The ice in the bedroom in the US in February 1961 and as Ice in the bedroom in the UK in October 1962. I happen to have a copy of the US first edition, so I'm sticking with the definite article...) ( )

either Mr Wodehouse has entered so far into the consciousness of the English Speaking World that we are all his children and rehearse his message over and over. or to my taste, he just wasn't very funny. I'm going to say even when young I usually faced his work with the feeling, "Well, I wish I had this guy's problems." just not funny to me. ( )

I wouldn’t call this classic Wodehouse but it’s certainly worth a read.

Although the plot isn’t as fun as in many of the author’s other books, we do get some delightful characters such as Dolly Molloy, Sally, and Mr Cornelius.

I particularly liked Mr Cornelius’s obsession with Valley Fields and how he can’t understand why anyone who’s lived there would ever want to leave. ( )

As an immense and longterm fan of P. G. Wodehouse, my default rating for one of his books is almost always around four stars, and this is no exception. Released at the beginning of the sixties, there is a bit of tension in this book between the idyllic, Edwardian golden age of Wodehouse's imagining, and the realities of the early 1960s. Wodehouse no longer speaks of characters taking a boat between England and America, but rather an airplane. The action is set in a suburb of London, an environment that was fully relevant to the time period, but for which Wodehouse has nothing but scorn.

The most interesting character in the whole of the story is that of Leila York. She is a figure much like Bertie's Aunt Dahlia, a robust and independent woman, and far more interesting that most of the rest of the cast. Freddie Widgeon would have been known to Wodehouse's readers of old, but the remainder are rather forgettable. The overall feeling is that it was written for the stage, or perhaps as a series of unconnected scenes strung together by the barest of plot.

All of this is eminently forgivable given the strength of language. Although weaker than some of his other output, the masterful use of description and metaphor is very much in evidence, along with a few genuine laugh out loud lines.

I would not recommend this book as an entry for Wodehouse, but to anyone who has grown to appreciate his writing, Ice in the Bedroom will be well received.