Here is the setup: Gethryn, prefect and star cricketer at Beckford College, is minding his own business when a new boy arrives. That new boy is his uncle. Farnie is eight years old, devastatingly cheeky, and absolutely determined to make his younger nephew's life interesting. What follows is a gentle battle of wills as the Bishop tries to maintain his dignity while his diminutive uncle runs rings around the entire school. Wodehouse's debut novel in the genre already displays his gift for comic observation: the dormitory politics, the cricket matches threatened by chaos, the indignity of a prefect being ordered about by someone who still needs help tying his shoelaces. It's a slight, sunny confection, but one that establishes the template Wodehouse would spend decades refining, the absurd premise played straight, the affection for eccentrics, the belief that life at an English school is inherently hilarious. For readers who want to see where the master of comic prose got his start.
