Book review: Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks

The thirty-ninth book I read in 2016 was Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks.  I was astonished to see a "new" Jeeves book on the shelves at Half Price Books and was willing to pay half-price to see how well the author managed to replicate P. G. Wodehouse's inimitable writing style.

The cover describes the book as a homage to Wodehouse; the author's note calls it a tribute.  Faulks doesn't overpromise but professes humility in taking on the task of the authorized sequel and in the most worthy of causes: that of directing new readers to the Wodehouse oeuvre.  Within reason, he succeeds admirably.

He does very well at recreating Bertie's distinctive narrative voice, full of '20's slang, abbreviations, and laugh-out-loud metaphors.  The plot, as per usual, involves Bertie's romantic entanglements, but in a sharp departure from Wodehouse, in this book, Jeeves schemes to make sure his employer makes it down the aisle rather than masterminding an honorable way out of an engagement.  As Wodehouse's modus operandi in the Jeeves stories was to preserve the status quo, whereas this follow-up is intended as a capstone on the series, it's not a terrible idea to give the protagonist a happy ending, but the tone shift is jarring.  The problem isn't that Georgiana Meadowes is Honoria Glossop; instead, she's likeable enough that the prospect of her spending several decades wed to eternal boy-child Bertie Wooster makes you feel a little queasy for her.

In addition, while Jeeves's methods have put Bertie in a tight spot with an aunt or two before, I don't believe he would put his employer up to such clearly dangerous and illegal acts as he does in this installment.  Moreover, I categorically deny that Jeeves would ever countenance misrepresenting himself as an aristocrat to innocent outsiders (i.e., not aunts or Drones) for days on end to gain another man's hospitality under false pretences.  It's simply not cricket.

In the end, while Faulks succeeds in writing a perfectly amiable book, it suffers from the same defect which afflicts Jill Paton Walsh's pseudoWimsey books: the desire to pair everyone off.  If Lord Peter marries Harriet Vane, well, then, Bunter must obtain a wife of his own.  Paton Walsh's books suffer from numerous other flaws which make them unbearable; I certainly don't mean to equate Faulks's book with them.  But the concept of Bertie and Jeeves having a double wedding and then living happily ever after in a country house with their wives is a curiously flat ending to their story.  I prefer to imagine the ageless Bertie ever-bumbling and the inimitable Jeeves living only to serve.