Young Men in Spats

Rating:
Summary: Wodehouse at the peak of his form
Review: Arguably his finest non-omnibus short story collection. Story for story, it's hard to imagine ANYONE writing material as consistently, inventively, and intoxicatingly funny as this. If your knowledge of P.G. Wodehouse is only of the Jeeves stories (which are wonderful in and of themselves), this is a terrifc way to start acquainting yourself with some of the other denizens of his fictional unvierse. Contains a mixture of Drones Club and Mulliner stories, and includes "Uncle Fred Flits By", recently voted as Plum's best-ever short story by members of P.G. Wodehouse societies worldwide.

Rating:
Summary: "Spats" Falls Flat...
Review: While I love Wodehouse-he is indisputably one of the masters of modern literature-this particular collection of stories (which originally appeared in Strand and Cosmopolitan in the early '30s) is rather weak. The main problem is that they are all of a piece, virtually every one revolves around a silly young man (generally one of the Drones Club cohort) and his affections for a beautiful girl. Invariably, the man falls for the woman and then due to various simple comic misfortunes, loses her. One or two is fine, but a whole book of the plot over and over gets rather tedious. What makes Wodehouse's longer stories work to much better effect are the existence of multiple storylines which elegantly dovetail a the end, along with smart, clever, or willful other characters to provide contrast and balance (for example, Jeeves, Uncle Fred, various Aunts). It should come as no surprise that the standout story here is the lone Uncle Fred entry. In short, this collection lacks the wit, pleasantly convoluted schemes, and even high level of prose, that one expects when picking up one of Plum's works.