A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse

Information

Goodreads: A Damsel in Distress
Series: None
Source: Daily Lit
Published: 1919

Official Summary

When Maud Marsh flings herself into George Bevan’s cab in Piccadilly, he starts believing in damsels in distress. George traces his mysterious traveling companion to Belpher Castle, home of Lord Marshmoreton, where things become severely muddled. Maud’s aunt, Lady Caroline Byng, wants Maud to marry Reggie, her stepson. Maud, meanwhile, is known to be in love with an unknown American she met in Wales. So when George turns up speaking American, a nasty case of mistaken identity breaks out. In fact, the scene is set for the perfect Wodehouse comedy of errors.

Review

A Damsel in Distress is exactly one what would expect from a Wodehouse novel: a humorous story about members of the upper class in early twentieth century England getting into romps and mishaps as they pursue love and get all tangled up in scrapes and misunderstandings.

And, to be honest, I don’t know if there’s much more to say about the book besides that.  I think most people who are familiar with Wodehouse are familiar with his Jeeves series, and A Damsel in Distress is in that vein: just imagine a story without  the competent Jeeves to put everything back together at the end and where the protagonist is one of one of Bertie Wooster’s lovelorn friends.  There are some subtle differences to help the book sound, well, not like Jeeves: there’s a woman as a prominent character, and the characters are more into golf than into horse racing, but the gist is that if you like the Jeeves books or other Wodehouse novels, you’ll probably like this (and if you don’t, you won’t).

I wish I had more to say, but I’ve been sitting on writing this review for several days, and it really is just delightfully entertaining in exactly the way I would have anticipated based on Wodehouse’s other works.  (And I’ll add a note that British humor doesn’t always strike me as funny, so if you’re the same way, you might find you actually find these books surprisingly amusing.)