Cocktail Time

Wodehouse has created another set of hilarious, self-absorbed, but well-meaning, and typically British characters here. Who needs Jeeves and never mind those stupid pro-Nazi Wodehouse ramblings, this is the real thing. Every page has some serious laugh out loud stuff to it. First Lord Ickenham initiates some serious soul-searching and literary output from a former class-mate, Beefy Bastable, by slyly knocking his hat off his head as he looks for a taxi. Then to make it even more fun, he encourages poor Beefy in this pursuit by assuring him that he is not capable of writing a novel. The over-worked barrister then pens a blockbuster about how the younger generation lacks discipline, vision, and morality. When bishops decry the racy bits from the pulpit, the novel becomes a success and Hollywoood comes calling for the movie rights. Now Wodehouse really rolls up his sleeves. Ickenham intervenes in four on-again, off-again romances, putting them all right in the end. The paternity of Cocktail Time becomes a bit confused, as several claim the authorship (Bastable used a nom de plume as he did not want the outcry over the novel to affect his goal of standing for Parliament as a Conservative). Additional loopy characters such as Young Mr. Saxby and the elusive Flannery drop in. Good light reading, take it to the beach and enjoy.

Do you enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process? If so, Cocktail Time will soon become one of your favorite comic novels. The book's premise is deliciously contrary -- if a friend says that you cannot write a novel, some people will feel bound to prove the friend wrong. The backdrop for that decision is uproariously bizarre. The friend, the fifth Earl of Ickenham, has been feeling his oats a bit too much at the Drones Club and decides to borrow a slingshot (catapult in the UK) to pop the top hat off his old friend, Sir Raymond (Beefy) Bastable, with a Brazil nut as Beefy left the neighboring Demosthenes Club. When Beefy tells Ickenham that he wants to find the miscreant who did the dastardly deed, Ickenham offhandedly comments that it's a pity that Beefy is not an author who could use the literary sword to put all such pranksters in their place. That sets the stage for Beefy's novel, Cocktail Time, which he writes under a nom de plume. There's only one complication. Beefy wants to stand for Parliament and he has written a scandalous book that would ruin his political career. As the book's sales begin to take off like a rocket ship, Beefy realizes he needs some cover. Ickenham suggests that Beefy find someone else to pretend to be the author. With that suggestion, an unimaginable series of events follows . . . each more humorous than the last. Will Beefy keep his honor? Will someone else keep his royalty checks? Will love conquer all? The plot is one of the most complex ones that I have ever read in a comic novel, and the ever-shifting action works well. You'll have great fun with Cocktail Time. I don't remember a P.G. Wodehouse book that I have enjoyed more than this one.

I highly recommend this book. It is very good and entertaining. It's very funny too. Any fan of P.G. Wodehouse's work will really enjoy it.

I see that my fellow reviewers of this tasty comic novel are willing to weigh in at only four of the possible five stars. I dissent vigorously and award the full five. Nothing less than five will do for a storyline so perfectly convoluted, language and syntax so recklessly heedless of anything real or centered. The characters are familiar Wodehouse types: quaintly erratic and utterly dependable for their supply of humor. Feydeau never plotted anything as neat and door-bangingly twisted, and the master Wodehouse provides page after page of crackpot ways to describe all of the door-slamming action.