Galahad at Blandings

June 25, 2012
Narrator Martin Jarvis—whose formidable skills have brought to life many abridged audio editions of Wodehouse classics—once more delivers a stellar performance. The author’s signature prose (“There had occurred that morning on the New York Stock Exchange one of those slumps or crashes which periodically spoil the day for Stock Exchanges”) gets its just desserts via Jarvis’s appropriately droll reading. And the narrator—who is equally adept with typical Wodehousian similes (“He looked like the poet Shelley after a big night out with Lord Byron”)—reads slowly enough that the jokes aren’t swallowed up, but fast enough to keep pace with this quickly moving farce. The plot features all the classic Wodehouse ingredients: the eccentric occupants of Blandings Castle, a prize-winning pig, engagements that are desired, and engagements that are less than desired. Fans will be delighted.