Spring Fever

By P.G. Wodehouse

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140030409
• ISBN13: 9780140030402
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS LTD
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.1" x 0.5" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

Miscues and misdirections in a stately home

This delightful Wodehouse romp is a marvelous mixture of misunderstandings, long lost loves, schemes and impersonations that all resolve well after marvelous comic side trips along the way. The various subplots include an impoverished Lord who longs to escape his family estate and bossy eldest daughter to run a pub with the family cook. Unfortunately though he lacks the necessary two hundred pounds needed for this enterprise and is afraid that his rival and butler will manage to raise the funds and gain the cook's hand in marriage. Meanwhile in London an American millionaire heir is pining for the affections of a beautiful actress who scorns him as long as his father holds the purse strings. Added to this mix is a semi reformed burglar turned butler, a handsome, rich American agent and a missing stamp. Confused? Read the novel and all will be made clear in hilarious detail. As always with a Wodehouse story this is a wonderful comic romp guaranteed to take the reader from where ever they are to that wonderful Wodehouse fantasy land where all Americans are rich, butlers have never superhuman powers (which they can use for either good or ill), and true love conquers all.

Runnin' High

"Spring Fever" is a classic example of P.G. Wodehouse's inimitable style, a story so convoluted in concoction that it actually works. The story begins when Stanwood Cobbold, a millionaire heir with a face like a hippo, is sent to London by his father to keep him from marrying a Hollywood actress. He is escorted by his valet and reformed thief, Augustus Robb, and his friend, Mike Cardinal, the Hollywood agent with the face of a Greek god. Throw into the mix Lord Shortlands, a destitute earl who longs for two hundred pounds so he can marry his cook, his daughter Teresa who wants nothing to do with Mike Cardinal, and his butler who also wants to marry the cook and will stop at nothing to woo her away from Lord Shortlands. All of the troubles and concerns of these characters intertwine when Stanwood is meant to visit Lord Shortlands at his castle. However, his Hollywood paramour has just arrived in London, and he doesn't want to leave her. Mike Cardinal agrees to visit the castle pretending to be Stanwood so that he can woo Teresa, with her and her father the only ones in the know. But when Mervyn Spink (Lord Shortland's conniving butler) catches on, he springs a plot of pretense of his own involving the real Stanwood Cobbold. As the story progresses, more and more lies need to be told until the reader is uncertain as to how any of this can be wrapped up with all characters satisfied. "Spring Fever" is a classic comic novel from P.G. Wodehouse. It is a time capsule of a particular era and a portrait of the strictures of British high (although a little cash-strapped) society. Its humor manages to transcend time and tradition, making Wodehouse's writing truly timeless.

Nearly Blandings Castle

This one-off novel, dating from 1948, follows just after a Jeeves novel, Joy in the Morning (1947), a Blandings saga, Full Moon (1947), and just before the excellent Uncle Dynamite (1948) and another Wooster, The Mating Season (1949). Arguably, it stems from the era of Wodehouse at the top of his form. Nevertheless, it seems to be pieced together from a musical comedy, with one of the longest and most unconvincing love scenes in his ouvre, a thin and unlikely plot, and the happy ending repeatedly dished so many times that the deus ex machina tie up seems almost anticlimactic when it comes. Those would be major problems for most writers, but they are merely small oversights for Wodehouse, since this book yet contains some of his best sustained scenes and most quoted lines. Wodehouse liked it well enough to rehash it as The Old Reliable in 1951. It's almost a Blandings Castle novel, with Lord Shortlands instead of Emsworth, but with far more dialogue, as if written for the stage. Even after the main characters exit to the altar or registry, there are enough loose ends left to fill another novel, which likely suggested The Old Reliable. Not top drawer PGW, but a readable light novel just the same.

A true Wodehouse

Written in P.G.W's inimitable style, Spring Fever has as its principle characters a young man who looks like a greek god and has brains too ( Note: Brains preferring to ignore gentlemen with drop-dead-handsome good looks), a girl with equally good looks but not so sharp a brain, another young man with neither the looks mentioned above nor the brains, also mentioned above, and a Lord, given to uttering sudden exclamations, and not so given to contributing intelligent ideas to any conversation involving himself. Add to this lot of players a daughter hell-bent on keeping her father, the afore mentioned Lord, in proper discipline, a dashing butler with a cunning mind, and a stamp collector husband and you get a simply riotous tale. This tale, as every Wodehouse tale, has his usual ingredients - engagements between 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' being solemnised in every other chapter and broken in the very next, an amazing array of problems being solved equally amazingly as yet another amazin array of P. comes up. Simply lovely. Wodehouse ranks right up there with the best.