Mike and Psmith

by P.G. Wodehouse

Book Overview

This season, Overlook is pleased to offer the latest two hilarious novels, Mike and Psmith and Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140124470
• ISBN13: 9780140124477
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Grounded Wodehouse

If you pick up Mike and Psmith and expect it to be like the wacky comedies that Wodehouse composed in the 20s and 30s, you might be slighted disappointed. This is early Wodehouse, a Wodehouse concerned with school masters, ragging (an expression for creating mischief) and especially cricket. It is also a more grounded Wodehouse, a novel where the comedy is more subtle, a novel where the characters are not quite so flighty. This is also Wodehouse at his least complex. This is not the novel that shows his mastery of the convulted plot, where every word spoken and deed done entagles our heros and heroines in further trouble.This said, I need to quickly confirm that Mike and Psmith is a wonderful novel. It still has a freshness and innocence about it that is highly appealing. In this day and age, of rampant murders and unclear elections, Mike and Psmith is as sunny and cheerful a book as you are likely to find. And just to show you that I read Mike and Psmith with my eyes wide open, I have to state that my early comments are not intended as criticism but as a compliment. The subtlety is the very reason why this novel is so great! It is his art in creating a scene or a character and putting in the interesting setting of Sedleigh that Wodehouse shows why so many refer to him as the Master.Mike and Psmith is not the funniest book Wodehouse wrote, but it does have many incredible scenes, especially Mr. Downing's search for the paint splashed shoe. I agree with the other reviewers that this is the high point of the book. I think readers will find a lot to enjoy in this novel. It is an escape to a world not that far removed for our own but placed in a time that we will never see again. This novel truly scores a century!

hysterical

This is so, so completely funny. I love this book. I have read it so many times and it's still funny. It's about this two English boys at school. The school-story genre is fairly grim, I know, with all it's moralizing and weird relationships between students etc., but this is so completely funny. It's probably my favorite of all the Psmith books (although, Leave it to Psmith is fairly excellent as well).

Very enjoyable

I have to confess that I am a Wodehouse addict. I read the predecessor to this book (Mike at Wrykyn) when I was fifteen and had always wanted to read Mike and Psmith. Re. this book, Wodehouse had me in stitches most of the time - the portions relating to Mr. Downing are hilarious. Cricket is also a focus of this novel. If you are like me and miss the game, this will bring those school time memories flooding back. For those who haven't read a Psmith novel before, I highly recommend them. It is said that Wodehouse created the Jeeves and Wooster characters as 2 spin-offs from Psmith and you can certainly see the connections! On the whole, another Wodehouse classic.

Very humorous

I first read this book when I was 13, and it was the third Wodehouse book I had read. Some people say Wodehouse is boring; never! Wodehouse's English is so nicely crafted, it gives his stories a vivid character. Particularly Psmith's charactre is notable, and his mannerism and ingenuity make one laugh. There are some scenes in the book that are really hilarious(to me, at least) such as where Psmith and Mike talk to the headmaster about the study and the scene with the shoes. This is a humorous romp through boarding school, and a worthwhile book to put your nose into.

Enthusiastic to the point of sycophancy

I should probably declare an interest here; P.G.Wodehouse has been a hero of mine from the age of thirteen. In the eleven years since I first picked up "Psmith in the City", I have developed a rapacious appetite for all things Wodehousian. Until the age of sixteen, I read very little else. Bearing this in mind, anyone reading this would be quite entitled to sniff with indignation and dismiss this rant as the work of one who, although well-intentioned, is basically a one-dimensional fool. It probably is. However, it is my firm belief that this is one of the five funniest novels I have ever read. Anyone who can read the account of Mr. Downing, searching in vain for a paint-splattered shoe, without at the very least chuckling, must be some sort of stoic. Wodehouse created a pantheon of memorable characters and Psmith will take his place with the immortals. The vast majority of these characters are schoolboys in an adult world; Psmith is exactly the opposite. It is his capacity both for absurdity and for the most studied solemnity that make this book what it is. It deserves to be read.