#43 Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, by PG Wodehouse (Penguin Books)

Another novelist I'd never read before was PG Wodehouse, and it's taken me around four years to take the advice of TC (who also recommended Paul Auster, by the way), although I overlooked his suggestion that I begin with the classic Jeeves and Wooster series. After completing the book, the main question I was wondering was ‘why had it taken me so long’?

I read Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin while stuck at an airport for around five hours waiting for the plane upon which I was due to fly to be fixed, and I can honestly say that this book was the only reason I managed to maintain my patience.

Thoroughly enjoyable, with lots of neat post-modern asides from the writer to the reader, Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin is not only funny, its chaotic and convoluted plot meanders this way and that as the reader sympathises with the main character and his efforts to first prove himself worthy of marriage and then try to escape from his engagement – with added criminals, movie moguls, private detectives, nightclubs and the obligatory (in a Wodehouse novel, apparently) large country house.

Set in a world in which butlers and the like are the norm, I have to admit I was thoroughly charmed.

So, rating time:

#43 Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, by PG Wodehouse (Penguin Books) - 9/10

Next up: Occupied City, by David Peace (Faber and Faber Limited)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating