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Jill the Reckless
Blurb
Jill The Reckless is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on October 8, 1920 by George H. Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, on 4 July 1921. It was serialised in Collier's between 10 April and 28 August 1920, in Maclean's between 1 August and 15 November 1920, in both cases as The Little Warrior, and, as Jill the Reckless, in the Grand Magazine, from September 1920 to June 1921.The heroine here, Jill Mariner, is a sweet-natured and wealthy young woman who, at the opening, is engaged to a knighted MP, Sir Derek Underhill. We follow her through financial disaster, an adventure with a parrot, a policeman and the colourful proletariat, a broken engagement, an awkward stay with some grasping relatives, employment as a chorus girl, and of course, the finding of true love.
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Tarma
Goodness, two romances in a row that I have enjoyed enough to rate highly - my recommendations are surely ruined by now. On the other hand if I can find more heroines like Jill in this book and Sophy in The Grand Sophy, it may just be worth it. I would like to say though, to anyone who thinks, as I might, "oh! a romance, that's not for me!" It wasn't the romances in either book that caught me, but the fun that the stories exude while the romances push on along to their inevitable ends. Though I'm sure romance lovers will disagree, in my reading of both, the romances were almost an afterthought in the stories, something that ran along quietly in the background, giving the humor and fun of the books something to ride along on. I have in the past tried the Jeeves stories and found myself underwhelmed. I found Wooster incredibly irritating after a certain time and the stories felt too repetitive. I am very happy that I wandered outside of those stories to dip my toe in the rest of his works, because Jill the Reckless is hilarious. The story itself is nothing special - girl meets boy, etc, etc - but Wodehouse's talent turns it into a tremendously entertaining story. Somehow he takes characters, situations, and a plot, all of which are stereotypical and frequently used, and makes it into something better. The story ends as all such stories end - Or, in the words of Miss Prism, <i>the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily - that is what fiction means!</i> - but by the time I reached the ending, whether the ending was possibly too quick and smooth or not had long since ceased to matter. Jill the Reckless made me laugh out loud many times, and the characters were incredibly likeable, even the unlikeable ones, if only because I got to see them suffer just enough, without going over the top and leaving me wondering if I shouldn't, at some point, start feeling sorry for them (see for example Demetrius from A Midsummer Night's Dream, whose punishment for flirting with a girl a little too heavily this one time was, apparently, to be brainwashed for life. Creeeepy!)
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