Review: Leave it to Psmith by PG Wodehouse

by Chriss Cornish published: April 18, 2011 No Comments

This Book Is About

A debonair young Englishman, Psmith (“the p is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan”) has quit the fish business, “even though there is money in fish,” and decided to support himself by doing anything that he is hired to do by anyone. Wandering in and out of romantic, suspenseful, and invariably hilarious situations, Psmith is in the great Wodehouse tradition.

My Thoughts On This Book

Leave It To Psmith is lightly silly and good fun.

Quick breakdown:

Psmith has tired of working for his uncle in the fish business and has put an ad in the paper saying he’ll undertake any employment as long as it doesn’t involve fish, a little crime not objected to. Freddie Threepwood, son of Lord Emsworth (Earl of Blandings), wants cash to start a bookie business. Freddie’s uncle, Joe Keeble, wants to send money to his struggling stepdaughter so she and her husband can buy a farm but his imperious wife, Lady Constance (who is also Lord Emsworth’s sister), refuses to let him because she’s still furious the girl ran off with a man of her own choosing instead of the high society boy Connie had selected for her. Eve Halliday, cheerfully down on her luck, is tired of Freddie proposing to her but has a job cataloging his father’s library at Blandings castle. Canadian poet McTodd gets furious when Lord Emsworth won’t give him enough attention during lunch and refuses to come to Blandings after-all.

The solution to everyone’s problems? Steal Connie’s diamond necklace.

Wodehouse-ian hilarity ensues.

My favorite scene of Leave It To Psmith is where Earl Emsworth’s be-spectacled secretary, The Efficient Baxter, gets locked out of the manor in his pajamas during the wee hours while trying to catch the thief who stole Lady Constance’s diamond necklace (because SOMEONE manages it). He gets desperate when his more genteel attempts to wake someone in the house fail. Frantic and sleep deprived, he soon resorts to throwing flower pots. It’s absolutely hilarious, and I tend to read this scene to visiting friends to get a giggle out of them. Quick sample:

The whole universe had now become concentrated in his efforts to rouse the log-like sleeper; and for a brief instant fatigue left him, driven away by a sort of Berserk fury. And there floated into his mind, as if from some previous existence, a memory of somebody once standing near where he was standing now and throwing a flower-pot in at a window at someone. Who it was that had thrown the things at whom, he could not at the moment recall; but the outstanding point on which his mind focused itself was the fact that the man had had the right idea. This was no time for pebbles. Pebbles were feeble and inadequate. With one voice the birds, the breezes, the grasshoppers, the whole chorus of Nature waking to another day seemed to shout to him, “Say it with flower-pots!”

If you need something light, witty, and just a tad silly to liven up your To-Read pile I can highly recommend Leave It To Psmith. This one is always in my re-re-read pile

Wodehouse, by the by, is the author of the Jeeves & Wooster books.