Piccadilly Jim
1918
Jimmy Crocker has been a scandal across two continents, and now, desperately in love, he's trying to become respectable. The universe, naturally, has other plans. His aunt's household is a minefield of chaos: her terrifying new husband Peter Pett, her monstrous stepson Ogden (a child so profoundly odious that adults conspire to have him kidnapped), and a rotating cast of imposters, crooks, and bewildered butlers. As Jimmy attempts to win back his beloved while his reputation crumbles around him, Wodehouse unleashes a masterpiece of controlled pandemonium. Every scene escalates with exquisite timing, every character speaks in perfectly calibrated absurdity. This is Wodehouse at his zenith, crafting a farce that moves like clockwork while reading like pure joy. The jokes land on the first read and reward every return visit.
Editions
X-Ray
“You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with 'Welcome' written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it’‘Do what?’‘Not strike lambs””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“She was at the valiant age when we burn to right wrongs and succour the oppressed,””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“I am going to start at the bottom and work my way still further down.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“Mr Pett, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy amateur.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“He wore the unmistakable look of a man about to be present at a row between women, and only a wet cat in a strange back yard bears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced by such a prospect.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“You never know what is waiting for you around the corner. You start the day with the fairest prospects, and before nightfall everything is as rocky and ding-basted as stig tossed full of doodlegammon.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“Even from an aesthetic point of view the sight of the bulging child offended him. Ogden Ford was round and blobby and looked overfed. He had the plethoric habit of one to whom wholesome exercise is a stranger and the sallow complexion of the confirmed candy-fiend. Even now, a bare half hour after breakfast, his jaws were moving with a rhythmical, champing motion. “What are you eating, boy?” demanded Mr. Pett, his disappointment turning to irritability. “Candy.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
“There are moments in the life of every man when the impulse attacks him to sacrifice his future to the alluring gratification of the present.””
— P. G. Wodehouse
