Fiction
MONEY FOR NOTHING. By P. G. Wodehouse. (Herbert Jenkins. 7s. 6d.)—Mr. Wodehouse is a humorist all the year round ; but in this book he is peculiarly a humorist for summer. Money for Nothing creates a light, cool bubbling of mirth in the heat-drugged brain. It is a tale continuously wreathed in smiles, and shaken here and there with sudden wild laughter. Those who are intelligent enough to delight in the irresponsible will be loath to quit the humours of Budge village, except to peep over the walls of Healthward Ho, where stout gentlemen take fantastic exercises and live " no life for a refined Nordic," or to visit the night club where those two light-hearted American crooks, the Molloys, find an opportunity to visit the ancestral home of the avaricious Lester Carmody, and arrange with him that complicated burglary of his own heirlooms so guilelessly frustrated by his two nephews. Hugo, who is like the Laughing Cavalier full-shaved," has a fascinating airy way with him ; and when John, his cousin, realizes from the delightful girl Pat that, " if one thing is certain in the relation of the sexes, it is that the Poor Old Johnnies of this world get nowhere," his character develops brilliantly. The fatherly young man, Ronald Fish, Sturgis the reminiscent butler, and, not least, that right-thinking dog, Emily, add to the general exhilaration. If Lester Carmody in the end agonizedly pays a deal of " money for nothing," he is at least reconciled with his friend Colonel Wyvem, whose body he has basely used as a barricade against danger. It is a lifer enhancing story.
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