
Something Fresh
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for £12.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jonathan Cecil
-
By:
-
P. G. Wodehouse
About this listen
This is the first Blandings novel, in which P.G. Wodehouse introduces us to the delightfully dotty Lord Emsworth, his bone-headed younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, his log-suffering secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and Beach the Blandings butler.
As Wodehouse wrote, 'without at least one imposter on the premises, Blandings Castle is never itself'. In Something Fresh there are two, each with an eye on a valuable Egyptian amulet which Lord Emsworth has acquired without quite realizing how it came into his pocket. But of course things get a lot more complicated than this...
©2014 P. G. Wodehouse (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Critic reviews
"For Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man....The gardens of Blandings Castle are the original gardens of Eden from which we are all exiled." (Evelyn Waugh)
Great introduction to Blandings!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Something Refreshing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Something Fresh
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thoroughly Enjoyable
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’ve always preferred the Jeeves and Wooster books to the Blandings books, mainly because I love Bertie Wooster and have never found any of the Blandings regulars as likeable. So it’s been a long number of years since I last read a Blandings book, until I was encouraged to do so by a recent review from a blogging friend. Noting that my favourite Jeeves and Wooster narrator, Jonathan Cecil, had recorded the first Blandings book was an extra incentive. And I enjoyed it a lot!
Despite it being a Blandings book, the Emsworth family play a rather secondary role, and I think that works to the book’s advantage. Instead the leads are Ashe and Joan and they’re both very likeable characters whom the reader would like to see succeed in their mission and achieve a happy ending. It’s a Wodehouse book, so of course happy endings are guaranteed! Joan is one of Wodehouse’s modern, feisty heroines with a mind of her own, a spirit of adventure and a determination to make her own way in the world. But that doesn’t make her immune to the charms of a man who appreciates her independence and admires her for it, like, for example, young Ashe. He has made a living write pulp detective stories for magazines but is heartily sick of it and wants to try something different. The reward Mr Peters is offering will give either of them the means to make a fresh start in life.
As well as the upstairs characters, we spend a lot of time below stairs with the servants, from Beach, the hypochondriac but immensely dignified butler, to the gossiping valets of the various guests who exchange scandalous and sometimes scurrilous stories about their employers past and present. Despite the main characters in Wodehouse’s books being culled from among the upper class, he’s actually not nearly as snobbish as many of his contemporaries. He sends up both high and low equally, and laughs at the aristocrats for the same kinds of quirks as he mocks in his servants. Just as Jeeves is at least Bertie’s equal, so Beach, though a figure of fun, is easily the intellectual and organisational superior of Lord Emsworth. If anything, the servant class has the upper hand over the aristos, even though they show all due deference to their ‘masters’. This somehow means the books feel less dated than they should, despite their belonging to a specific social level at a specific point in time. It’s an idealised, impossibly innocent world for sure, but all the more fun for that!
Needless to say, everything comes right at the end. Sundered hearts are united with true loves, and no one is left unhappy or heart-broken at the end. The sun always shines even when it rains, all’s right with the rightest of all possible worlds and everyone is destined to live happily ever after. Well, at least until the next time Wodehouse takes up his pen and throws them all into a different set of confusions and turmoil! I still prefer the Jeeves books, but enjoyed my visit to Blandings and will spend more time there in future. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
The Scandal of the Stolen Scarab!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A superb combination
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Joyful. Highly recommend
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fresh, Reviving, Funny and So Good
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Classic Wodehouse!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Is it possible that Wodehouse can be improved on?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.