Summer Moonshine

By P.G. Wodehouse

Book Overview

Joe Vanringham hankers after Jane Abbott, who wants Adrian Peake, who is engaged to Joe's stepmother, a formidable, foreign princess, who is the only possible buyer for Sir Buckstone Abbott's hideous ancestral home in Berkshire. So who can win what?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140025472
• ISBN13: 9780140025477
• Release Date: July 1991
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.7" x 0.6" x 5.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

A fun read

Wodehouse upbeat take on life makes for cheerful reading. His witty wordplay and silly situations make any day sunny!

When you need a bit of summer...

stretch out with this for a little get away. The setting is a rambling late Victorian monstrosity country house somewhere in the English countryside during the 1930's. The characters include the Lord of the manor, his family and staff and the guests that are paying to stay there. In typical Wodehouse fashion there are several plots that begin separately and then entertwine in a marvolously convoluted manner to produce delightfuly absurd situations. There are no appearances by Jeeves or Wooster in this one but the results are still delightful.

The best Wodehouse

I first read this book when I was 18, and like the hero, fell in love with a "not too tall girl with an upturned nose". I must have read this book atleast 200 times. You really do wish you were part of the happenings. I wish I could also howl like a wolf in a restaurant. The mysterious American uncle Sam chewing his gum, Tubby going back to his room with a Union Jack for a towel after he finds that his clothes have vanished while swimming, the house of red glazed brick, the Princess.. This is the book which made me fall in love in an Indian Summer.

A Different Wodehouse Book

Someday I'd like to read a real biography of Wodehouse (as opposed to the dreadful "fan" bios out there) and find out what was happening to him around 1936 -- when he wrote the scathing, angry "Laughing Gas" and this one. "Summer Moonshine" uses Wodehouse plot A: boy-chases-girl-at-country-house. Yet strange feelings of hopelessness and despair creep into it, and when boy loses girl there's a bitterness like in no other Wodehouse novel. It's not bad, but you definitely get the sense that, as the author himself might put it, something's up.

Probably the best book Wodehouse ever wrote

The first thing that has to be mentioned about Summer Moonshine is the hero - Joe Vanringham. I think he is the best hero that Wodehouse ever created - tough; street-smart; not at all the usual 'silly ass' and yet not overly romantic or anything like that. (In fact, if you read Bachelors Anonymous you'll realise that Wodehouse's Joes generally tend to be very good!) The plot is extremely complicated as Wodehousian plots tend to be, but even more so than usual. One finds oneself flipping back to check up on what happened where. And then, on finally figuring it out, laughing like a lunatic. It's a charming book, as economical with space and as funny as one has come to expect Wodehouse to be. Sir Buckstone Abbot is one of the best characters Wodehouse has ever come up with - ditto to Sam Bulpitt, and one wonders why they couldn't become recurring characters. But Joe is the best ever! All hail Joe Vanringham! (Forgive my babbling; this is my favorite book ever, as it's not that difficult to figure out.)