Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P. G. Wodehouse – An Audio Book Review

Blurb:

The beefy ‘Stilton’ Cheesewright has drawn Bertie Wooster as red-hot favourite in the Drones club annual darts tournament – which is lucky for Bertie because otherwise Stilton would have beaten him to a pulp and buttered the lawn with him. Stilton does not, after all like men who he thinks are trifling with his fiancée’s affections.

Meanwhile Bertie has committed a more heinous offence by growing a moustache, and Jeeves strongly disapproves – which is unfortunate, because Jeeves’s feudal spirit is desperately needed. Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia is trying to sell her magazine Milady’s Boudoir to the Trotter Empire and still keep her amazing chef Anatole out of Lady Trotter’s clutches. And Bertie? Bertie simply has to try to hold onto his moustache and hope he gets to the end in one piece.

Author: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrator: Jonathan Cecil

Running Time: 5 hrs 40 mins

Publisher: Audible Studios

Series: Jeeves #11

Genre: Historical Fiction/Comedy

My Rating of ‘Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit’: 4 out of 5

Purchase: Audible UK, Audible US, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Review:

This is by no means my favourite Jeeves and Wooster book, and is quite a long way off from being the best, but it still can be counted as a solid entry into the series.

Jeeves, although present, seems somewhat less so due to his being either absent for parts of having minimal input. It feels more like a Wooster novel than a Jeeves and Wooster novel, something which is in no way a bad thing. Bertie’s narrative style is a complete win for me every time. So much so that I fancy the same style could be used to write instruction manuals and they’d receive high ratings every time.

In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, our luckless hero Bertie faces the ever looming threats of a beating at the hands of Darcy ‘Stilton’ Cheesewright and the even deadlier threat, at least to a man of Bertie’s lifestyle, of marriage to the woman that the aforementioned Cheesewright has his eyes set on.

I think the best way of summing Bertie’s life up is ‘you can’t do right for doing wrong’. Whatever the poor chap tries, the universe has some cruel twisted joke to play on him for having tried it.

For me, his sheer rotten luck and the way in which he acts, speaks etc … make him one of my favourite characters in all of literature. Having Jeeves by his side makes for the perfect double act.

As I said before, this is a strong entry in the series, but not the best. Where before, some of the twists and turns weren’t overly easy to spot, they are almost blatantly obvious in ‘Feudal Spirit’. Some of the actions taken are also a bit odd considering simply not doing them would have given Bertie a much easier time of things. 

That being said, it’s still easy to enjoy, as is every book within the series, and I can’t wait to dip into more books from P. G. Wodehouse. Genuinely dreading the day when I have exhausted the man’s literature.

The narration in this one was absolutely wonderful. Jonathan Cecil, as I always say, sounds somewhat similar to Stephen Fry, something that makes this an even more enjoyable experience. So much so that I skipped a book in the series as he doesn’t appear to narrate book ten. I’ll no doubt buy that to read so as not to sully my ears with another narrator’s voice for this series.