Problem Club

The Problem Club meets monthly in a London backroom to solve the questions that truly matter: How does one kiss ten young ladies within the hour without causing offense? What is the proper response when caught in a compromising position? These are not mathematical puzzles or philosophical quandaries, but the pressing social problems that keep the Edwardian upper classes awake at night. Barry Pain constructs a sparkling comedy of manners where the real joke lies not in the absurd situations themselves, but in the deadly seriousness with which his characters approach them. The humor is dry, the social satire cuts just deep enough, and the effect is remarkably like watching brilliant people convulse over nothing. This is Edwardian comic fiction at its most clever - witty, light, and surprisingly sharp about the elaborate performative nonsense that governs polite society. It reads like what P.G. Wodehouse might have written had he leaned harder into social satire than pure farce.