After reading a few books written by one of the most widely-read humourists of the twentieth century, the books by P.G. Wodehouse promise you great joy, pleasure and lots of laughable extracts . When you start enjoying Wodehouse’s work for it’s own sake, the wonderful phrases, the multi-layered (even if similar) plots, the endearing if not exactly heroic protagonists are all as you would expect from any of his many books. Personally, I expected no more before picking up The Adventures of Sally.
But then I read the book. With a rich, consuming plot, this book is quite different from most of the famous writer’s books (well not totally different – the writing is still amusing and profound). Rather than containing the usual set of varied but short stories about a single protagonist, this book revolves around building up a plot, which spreads over several months in which the characters develop, their feelings are evaluated and what not. This is a Wodehouse novel as no other.
Sally Nicholas is a young, pretty, and popular American woman who lives in a boarding house in New York and works as a taxi dancer. The book opens with Sally throwing a party on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday, with the neighbours discussing all sorts of ways in which Sally could spend her million dollars, which is the grand sum she has inherited. The discussion soon takes a different curve when she reminds the audience of how she has only inherited 25,000 dollars and not a million dollars.
The book then sets on the path of Sally travelling to France for a holiday and how she meets Ginger, an amateur pugilist, office assistant, and among scores of other things, a dog trainer, one with an uncanny talent of screwing up everything he ever does. She also runs into a sophisticated businessman, wise in the ways of the world, and Ginger’s cousin, Bruce Carmyle. Soon both the cousins fall in love with Sally.
Sally decides to finance a theater that was organizing a play, owned by her dear brother Fillmore after coming back to her hometown.The play becomes a runaway success, and with Fillmore finding his love in life, all seems to be going okay when suddenly Sally finds her fiance marrying an actress. She is grief stricken and flees to London to escape the agony of remembering the romantic evenings spent with Gerald Foster.
Shortly she falls in love with another man as London sways her heart and soothes the pain. Meanwhile there is a ruined marriage for Gerald, when things suddenly change after the guy loses most of his wealth, a betting business in boxing which goes awfully wrong. All of this ensues a happy ending for the sweet dear lady Sally.
Similar to the rest of Wodehouse’s books The Adventures of Sally promises as much humour as the Jeeves collection does, but also contains an intriguing plot. The characters grow and mature, but not in the ways of those in the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners. They do it in the Wodehousian way. And they sure as hell make you smile with their quirks and eccentricities like Wodehouse characters always do.
Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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