Ivor Llewellyn is shocked when his sister-in-law Mabel announces her sister Grayce has bought a $50,000 necklace she expects Ivor to smuggle into the U.S. without paying duties. Of course he can afford the price he's president of Suberba-Llewellyn Motion Picture Corporation, but Grayce threatens a Paris divorce if Ivor doesn't comply with her wishes. When Monty Bodkin, the unfortunate former secretary of Lord Emsworth and erstwhile detective for P. Frobisher Pilbeam, asks Ivor how to spell a word, Ivor gets it into his head that Monty overheard the conversation about the necklace and is really a customs agent in disguise. When Monty's finace Gertrude Butterwick breaks up with him, he books passage on the steamer Atlantic to follow her to New York. Ivor and Mabel are also on the ship, solidifying Ivor's belief Monty is after him. Also on board are Monty's pal Reggie Tennyson and his brother Ambrose, who has just been invited to come write scenarios for Suberba-Llewellyn Motion Picture Corporation. Reggie's gal pal, the famous actress Lotus Blossom is on the Atlantic too, wanting to renew her friendship with Reggie in a most demonstrative way. Typically of Wodehouse this story features star-crossed lovers, zany scenes and instead of a butler, a meddling steward Alfred Peasemarch. I found this story has too many misunderstandings and confusions for my taste. It went on too long and the charm wore off quickly. As stupid as Monty and Reggie are, Ivor and Alfred were worse. Alfred was so completely annoying, constantly popping up where he was not wanted and causing trouble. Wodehouse's men are usually pretty dim but for Ivor to believe MONTY is a Customs' Agent and someone else is a famous writer, he has to be incredibly stupid. He didn't annoy me as much as Alfred though. Every time Alfred was around, I cringed. Monty was my favorite character. I felt really bad for him. He's such a nice chap and didn't deserve anything that happened to him.Wodehouse's women are usually much more intelligent than the men but not in this case. He really let me down with his obnoxious, annoying, stupid women. Lottie really took the cake. She was just so awful and obnoxious, not to mention cruel and thoughtless. She didn't care about willful destruction of property, Gertrude's feelings and thought it was funny to let people get a look at her unusual pet. She was selfish and cruel and I couldn't stand her. Her only growth is told rather than shown. Gertrude was no prize either. She was supposedly very much in love with Monty but yet doubted him and never let him catch a break. Monty doesn't deserve her. Mabel was the only one with sense and she came up with a whole bunch of silly ideas to break the law. She also came up with a great idea to do something that would benefit her and the one she loved. Still, she was a strong female character and I found her the most likable of them all.
‘The Luck of the Bodkins’ tells the continuing story of Monty Bodkin and his engagement to Gertrude Butterwick which relies on his remaining in someone’s employ for a whole year. We last met Monty at Blanding’s Castle where he was employed as secretary for Lord Emsworth for the length of ‘Heavy Weather’ rather than the length of a year. Monty left Blanding’s after gaining employment with Percy Pilbeam at the Argos Detective Agency. Monty is on Holiday at Cannes but follows Gertrude on board the RMS Atlantic after receiving a Cable breaking off their engagement.The RMS Atlantic acts as a typical Wodehouse stately home for the purposes of the farce with state rooms replacing the usual bedroom setting for the misunderstandings and complications that litter farce like so may discarded gloves. The RMS Atlantic has the usual domestic staff with steward Albert Peasemarch undertaking most of the ‘business’ usually entrusted to butlers or under footmen. Trying to summarise the plot in less than the three hundred pages Wodehouse uses would rather miss the point of this type of book but in essence Monty loves Gertrude, who thinks he likes Lotus Blossom, a movie starlet whom adores Ambrose, who thinks she has fallen for his brother, Reggie, whom has definitely got it bad for Mabel Spence, sister-in-law to movie mogul Ikey Llewellyn, whom has been charged with smuggling jewels for his wife Grayce.If the plot appears complicated you should try the resolution. And you really should try the resolution. The Liner setting allowed Wodehouse the unusual point that all his cast need not be aware of each over at the start of the voyage and allowed him to dispense with making half of them unwilling imposters. Definitely one of the masters most overlooked master pieces and my own personnel favourite.
What do You think about The Luck Of The Bodkins (2002)?
Probably Wodehouse's longest non-Jeeves/non-Blandings novel, Luck of the Bodkins appears to have started out as a play script or screenplay. If this surmise is correct, we can all shed a tear that Eric Blore never got to play the verbose, fat-headed, good-hearted cabin steward Albert Peasemarch. Peasemarch, a man capable of quoting Shakespeare, singing The Bandolero to a dubious crowd of second-class passengers with only a day's rehearsal, and running the length of a ocean liner half a dozen times, proves also up to the task of nearly wrecking the nuptial plans of a trio of miscellaneous upper-class Englishmen, the titular Monty Bodkin foremost among them. Peasemarch becomes, by degrees, an annoyance, an affliction, and ultimately a curse approaching biblical proportions to Bodkin, a man so dim he makes Bertie Wooster look like Enrico Fermi by comparison.Bodkin's role in this affair is smaller than the title might lead you to believe. Although he avoids the mid-point stabbing Shakespeare inflicted on Julius Caesar, there are moments in Luck of the Bodkins when he clearly longs for the sweet embrace of death, most notably when the American movie actress Lottie Blossom has, due to the incompetence of Peasemarch, gotten hold of a Mickey Mouse doll symbolic of his undying love for Gertrude Butterwick, and won't give it back unless he signs an acting contract with the big movie tycoon Ivor Llewellyn so that Llewllyn will give her fiance a job so that...no, there is too much. Let me sum up: it is a feast, one I only wish we could savor with the clicking of a projector in the background, with Albert Peasemarch, Monty Bodkin, and Lottie Blossom up on the screen in glorious sepia-tinted black and white.
—Lloyd
Great books unsually start with great 1st sentences, and Luck of the Bodkins doesn't disappoint with this classic Wodehouse gem: "Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French." How can you possibly put a book down that starts like that! And it only gets better.The eponomous hero Monty Bonkin is also a minor character in the Blandings novel Heavy Weather This book picks up right where we left him at the end of that book making it a sequel of sorts though you defininately do not have to have read Heavy Weather first. Set in London, New York and Hollywood this is a great farce, which will keep you laughing to the end. Another great thing about this is that it the longest Wodehouse novel I've come across at 358pgs. so there's more to love. Monty also returns in the later, weaker Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin.Most importantly, make sure you pick this novel up (as well as the other Wodehouse books available) in the exquisite Overlook (US) or Everyman (UK) editions -- the beautifully designed, well crafted uniform editions that will last for generations and only cost a couple of bucks more than the mass marked paperback.
—Franc
I wasn't sure about this book. My first impression was that it was a book about the trivial antics of a small group of upper-class twits trapped in each other's company on a transatlantic voyage; and indeed that's what it is.As I got further into it, I realized that the characters were going through a whole series of contortions to try to get out of their various problems, and each time landing themselves deeper in embarrassment and what they would see as trouble. Some people find this sort of thing amusing; I tend to find it rather painful.However, I have to admit that the book rather redeems itself with a rousing finale in which everyone miraculously gets out of trouble after all, and they all at least have a chance to live happily ever after. This is the kind of ending that endears a book to me; it leaves me in a good frame of mind.So, overall, I give this book a pass and concede that I quite like it. The twists of the plot are neatly done and some of the characters are quite well drawn. If you have an interest in the American film industry of the 1930s, there is some possibly amusing commentary about it here (Wodehouse was acquainted with it from the inside).
—Jonathan Palfrey
