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Review: Thank You, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

Every time I have checked out a Jeeves book from the library, it has been because I went looking for something in the W section and failed to find it.  In this case, the library claimed they had several Jeanette Winterson books in, when what they meant was that they had absolutely no Jeanette Winterson books in at all.  In particular they did not have Sexing the Cherry, which is the one I was after.  I drifted gloomily down the shelves and checked out two Jeeves books instead.

I do not advise this as a strategy.  It invites comparisons, and comparisons, as they say, are odious.  Thank You, Jeeves is no Sexing the Cherry.  (Or anyway it is no Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which is the only book by Jeanette Winterson that I have read.  I assume that Sexing the Cherry is of similarly high quality.)  However, I am afraid that I would not have liked Thank You, Jeeves, even if I hadn’t checked it out as a poor alternative to Jeanette Winterson.  It repeatedly uses a racial slur of which I am particularly unfond, and Bertie spends at least half of the book in blackface.  Because apparently to PG Wodehouse, THAT IS HILARIOUS.

Hey, guess what I hate?  Minstrelsy!  Aaaaaand racial insults!