The Problem with the Coming of Bill*

It finally happened; I’ve read a Wodehouse book that I really did not care for.  There were a couple of things that attributed to this.  The first that I encountered was the Domineering Aunt’s** taste for eugenics.  To me, it bought up uncomfortable images of the Final Solution and various experiments that were carried out by Hitler’s gang.  In Wodehouse’s defense, the book was written on 1919, when eugenics was a fad and possibly no one had any idea where it might lead.  Still, it was unsettling to see said Domineering Aunt refer to people as good breeding stock and consider that, once a couple had procreated, the male was surplus to requirements.

The other, larger problem was that I did not really like any of the characters until at least halfway through.  Basically the plot revolves around a young woman who drifts in the high society echelons of the world meeting and marrying a artist, or at least a young man with pretensions to being an artist.  The aunt approves of the match because she is beautiful and he is built along the strapping lines.  The young woman’s family does not approve and she is cut off.  They have a child, whereupon the man burns through his money trying to keep up with his wife’s lifestyle.  This burned me, mostly because I hate it when people live outside of their means.  The young woman comes across as dim and vain, which is guaranteed to earn my ire if it is not in a humorous vein a la Madeline Basset, Gussie Finknottle’s erstwhile love. 

There is only one person who comes through in the end, and that is the ex-boxer best friend of our leading man.  He is presented as perhaps not the sharpest of knives, but comes out with the most astute observations of the silly behavior that everyone indulges in.  Really, I could go on here, but it’s a waste of everyone’s time to review the plot.  While I realize that it is not the prime intention of literature to make you like the characters, they did not keep me riveted the way some anti-heroes can. 

The dust jacket warned me that this was Plum’s closest attempt at a serious novel.  I should have listened.  Perhaps he was too influenced by morality tales, or was trying out a gloomier post-WWI style so as to meld with the Lost Generation.  Whatever the reason, this will not go down in my annals as a Must Read. 

*Read March 2015.  Yes, I read two that month because I had to play catch-up from the previous autumn.

*She had a name.  I simply cannot be bothered to look it up because it means having to look at the book again.