Reviews for Summer Moonshine

The average rating for Summer Moonshine based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-23 00:00:00 Victor Toorres Sir Buckstone Abbott is in dire financial straits and wants to unload his dilapidated country home as soon as possible. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is engaged to a man who's also engaged to a woman thinking of buying the house but enamored with another man, Joe Vanringham. Additionally, Mrs. Abbot's brother is lurking in the background and Tubby Varingham is secretly in love with Buckstone's secretary. Can Abbot sell his house and get out of his money woes without condemning his daughter to an unhappy life? P.G. Wodehouse is like a master chess player and his characters are the pieces. While his plots are all very similar, they spin out of control and become unique tales in their own right. All the hallmarks are here: engagements, regrettable letters written in the heat of the moment, mistaken identity, etc, but they come together in delightful ways. You know things will end happily but Wodehouse puts you through the wringer getting there with his serpentine plot twists. As always, the writing is top notch. Wodehouse peppers the dialogue with gems like "She informs me she can make a substance called fudge but no waffles" and "I regard her as sand in Civilization's spinach." Joe Vanringham is the archetypical Wodehouse leading man, witty and quick thinking and his smoothness rivals that of Galahad Threepwood himself, a nice contrast to his brother Tubby. Jane Abbot is the typical Wodehouse heroine, strong and feisty. Miss Whitaker, the cold secretary with a knowledge of jiu jutsu, was an added bonus. While it wasn't a Jeeves or Blandings Castle book, it was still pretty good. If you like British comedy, this should be able to fulfill your needs for a few hours.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-21 00:00:00 David Miller This standalone is set around Walsingford Hall, the seat of Baronet Sir Buckstone Abbot, and which is also the ugliest country house in England (or at least, among them). Sir Buckstone, like many Wodehouse aristocrats, is cash strapped and has to take paying guests in the Hall to make ends meet. But he still owes money to various people, among them Busby, the publisher of his hunting memoirs, who has slapped him with an unexpected bill of over � 90. But he hopes to sell the Hall to a rich American, the Princess Dwornitzchek. Among the guests are also the Princess� stepson, Theodore �Tubby� Vanringham, who is in love with �Buck�s� secretary Miss Prudence Whittaker, but misunderstandings have led to a rift and Prudence is having Tubby served with summons in a break of promise and �heart-balm� case. Since Tubby was left in Buck�s charge, if the summons is served and proceedings begin, it will spell trouble for Buck and the sale he is counting so much on will fall through. Too add to his woes, the plasterer (process server) is Buck�s own brother-in-law, Sam Bulpitt (who incidentally he didn�t even know existed upto this point). And if that wasn�t enough, Tubby�s brother Joe has fallen for Buck�s daughter, the pretty Imogen �Jane� Abbott, but she is engaged to the good-for-nothing but handsome �worm� Adrian Peake, who also happens to be engaged to the Princess Dwornitzchek. So of course, in the book we have quite a few of the elements of the typical, convoluted Wodehouse plot, with plenty of room for confusion, and indeed for lots of laughs. (But there were other classic ingredients missing too�not a single impostor, and no one trying to �pinch� anything, and a plot not quite as muddled as some of them can get.) Some Wodehouse books get you doubling over with laughter or even falling off your chair�this wasn�t one of them unfortunately for me. But that said, it was still a fun read, made me laugh a fair bit (there�s some poking fun at American and English pronunciation), and also had a fairly interesting plot with some things at least that one didn�t see coming. Things go wrong, things go right, people come into money and just as easily lose it, hearts are joint, only to break, but then be joined again�but at the end, without fail all comes right with the world. In Wodehouse land, even if this wasn�t one of my favourite parts of it, things are neither ever dull nor ever unpleasant. It is a piece of idyll; one is happy to be lost in for a while. Three stars.