In 1932 England, Sally Smith is something of a sensation, at least whenever a male discovers she is not only a very attractive woman, but also a very competent medical doctor. Rich landed gentry Bill Bannister falls in love with her the first time he sees her, but she is not interested because she assumes he does not work and does not contribute to society. How she discovers who the real Bannister is, leads us through many hilarious scenes of miscommunication, missed understandings and badly timed appearances.

A brief, humourous, satirical read from Wodehouse ( )

3.5*

A fun, quick read. ( )

Interminable - which is quite an achievement at 130 pages. Any critic who has ever accused a far better Wodehouse novel of being glib or shallow should be forced to read this one, which is both. And there's probably a reason, too: it's a very simple comedy of errors, adapted from one of Wodehouse's stageplays (itself an adaptation of a Hungarian work). They might just as well have published the script, and it wouldn't have been significantly different - aside from a little narration at the start of almost every chapter, the book is completely made up of dialogue and entirely stagebound. You can practically see the act breaks, even though they aren't indicated. It's that stagey.

There are only five characters, with each one going in and out and mistaking each other's identities. ("You said you were in love with her!" "Not that girl!") Worse, everything they say is so trite; many of the gags involve characters simply parroting the same line back an forth with slight variations as questions. It gets to the point that Wodehouse finally simply lampshades it in the last few pages, having one character get sick of the "vaudevillian" patter. The end will make any modern reader roll their eyes, but it might have been salvageable if we liked these characters. We don't, and it's not.

I suspect this played better, if not perfectly, on stage with popular actors. It reminds me a lot of the slightly arch romantic comedy films of the period (the early '30s), which are charming primarily because of likeable young leads like Ginger Rogers and endearing character actors like Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore. As movies, they're pleasant if not amazing. As scripts, they're garbage.

The constant criticism of Wodehouse's "shallow" writing and how it's "never about anything that matters" overlooks how much of his work was a great satirical observation of human nature. He used glibness and slang to hugely ironic effect, often underscoring just how frustrating, irritating, and downright manipulative people are under all that politeness. This book has none of that; all five of the characters are pure types, and their interactions feel like cut-rate Wodehouse written quickly to make a deadline - and a buck. Perhaps, in the end, that's exactly what it is. ( )

A fun, quick read ( )

Dr. Sally Smith is a young, competent, no-nonsense, successful American medical doctor, attractive enough that Bill Banister immediately falls completely in love with her. Thinking he is one of the idle rich, she rebuffs his attentions. In spite of Bill's friend, Lord "Squiffy" Tidmouth, and his uncle, Sir Hugo Drake, trying to bring them together and only complicating matters, all ends happily when [SPOILER] Sally realizes that Bill works hard at running his country estate. ( )