First book review of 2024: The Curious Quest by E. Phillips Oppenheim
A friend of mine tracked this book down because she sort of enjoyed the movie, the Amazing Adventure, by Cary Grant. We’re talking an old book this time, folks! It’s so old it’s on Project Gutenburg!
The story follows a bored young millionaire, Ernest Bliss, in the roaring 20s in London. He goes to the doctor to find out what’s the matter with him, because he’s bored of life and his digestion and sleep aren’t good. The doctor tells him contemptuously that easy living is killing him, and that the only cure would be to go out and get a job and live on what he makes. The doctor sneers that this young man’s character is so weak, he’d never last a week. Then he refuses to shake Bliss’s hand.
His pride stung, Bliss proclaims that he’ll start this very day to earn his living, leaving home with only five pounds in his pocket. He then sets the following conditions. He won’t touch his own money to benefit himself for 12 months. If he uses his money to benefit someone else, he will immediately cut ties with that person so their success doesn’t indirectly benefit him. If he gives up any time during the 12 months, he has to pay the doctor 25k. If he makes it through all 12 months, the doctor has to shake his hand and apologize. The doctor scoffs and says it’s the easiest bet he’s ever won.
So Bliss leaves his assets in the hands of his lawyer, and his plush apartments in the hands of his manservant, and sets out into London to earn his keep for 12 months. From here, the book turns episodic, with each of the jobs he gains and loses forming each episode. He gets jobs selling stoves, he works as a chauffeur and a cab driver, he works odd jobs loading and unloading carts. Along the way, he finds himself working for illegal gambling dens, blackmailers, and other amoral people, and finds his own character tested. (The best one is when a guy hires him to pose as himself to perform bank fraud on himself!)
These jobs are not isolated incidents, however. He makes friends that remember him, friends far different from the idle rich he used to run around with. He sees his old idle rich companions in a whole new light as they unwittingly cost him jobs and trample over him.
And he gets a girl. Their romance is quiet and understated in that wonderful way of old books, and he’s utterly devoted to her, and she to him. But he won’t marry her until his 12 months are up, because he wants to give her the best life he can. Meanwhile, she tries to find work as a typist, and in at least one situation, Bliss has to rescue her from an employer whose only interest in her is physical, if you know what I mean. He goes off on long jobs and sometimes doesn’t see her for weeks, then when he gets back, she’s unemployed and being ‘slowly broken on the wheel of poverty’. She had a man who wanted to marry her, but she left him because she was in love with Bliss. The harder things get for her over the course of the year, the more she wants to just go back to that other man, because then at least she’ll have food and security. Bliss begs her not to do it and just last it out a little longer … and of course he can’t tell her why.
This relationship is what ends up driving the tension of the book. Will she trust him? Will they make it? Will they hang in there?
Well, this being an old book, the answer to all those questions is yes. The ending of this book is wonderful, to the point where my kids cheered as I read it to them.
My other friend and I declared this a lovely Christmas book, because the 12 months begin and end on December 12th. Christmas doesn’t feature in it, but the ending is so happy and heartwarming that it fits the holiday very well. I highly recommend the read for the sheer uplifting entertainment value.
