The Plot That Thickened

by P.G. Wodehouse, Few b/w Decorations (including Title Page & headpieces) (Illustrator)

There is no explaining tastes--particularly tastes in love. Monty Bodkin had for some reason fallen in love with Gertrude Butterwick, a beefy girl with large feet, who played on the All England women's hockey team....

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Comedy, British Literature

221 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1973

About the author

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Reviews

[QNPoohBear · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this final volume about Monty Bodkin, we find the hero ready to give the ol' heave-ho to his job in Hollywood so he can return home to marry Gertrude Butterwick. Not so fast! J.G. Butterwick, Gertrude's domineering father, is loathe to have his daughter marry a waster like Barney, so he finds a loophole in his plan. Monty did not obtain his employment in Hollywood honestly so he must find a new job for at least a year before he marries Gertrude. Enter Sandy Miller, a Hollywood secretary who is hopelessly in love with Monty. She manages to engage him as secretary to Ivor their Hollywood producer, Ivor Llewellyn, who is on holiday with his overbearing wife Grayce and awful step-daughter Mavis. Monty and Ivor get along splendidly as Monty helps Ivor thwart Grayce's plan to put Ivor on a diet. However, Mavis mistrusts Monty, believing him to be a criminal and encourages her mother to engage a detective. As the characters converge on a country house, the comedy takes the familiar path to the satisfactory ending for Monty.

This is not Wodehouse's best work but he was still churning out screwball comedies in his 90s that are a cut above anything passing for comedy these days. His world of Hollywood and the London Drones Club is a pleasant world where men have nothing to do but eat, drink and be merry. Women are either tyrants or sweet little nothings. Romance comes out of thin air and happily ever after is assured.

Like Bertie Wooster and Freddy Threepwood, Monty Bodkin is a member of the Drones Club. Like his pals, he's a brainless idiot, yet I like him so much more than Wooster. Wooster is brainless and then some but Monty is such a sweetheart and tries so hard to please everyone. He us such a nice guy that I hate to see him misunderstood and bullied. He and Gertrude will never work. They'll be just like Ivor and Grayce. I have no idea why Ivor stayed married to Grayce when they are complete opposites. Ivor is easy going when he's fed and drunk on champagne, while Grayce is a "panther woman", a domineering wife who never stops hounding her husband. She's his 4th wife! Grayce's daughter Mavis is cut from a similar mold but she's been educated at Vassar so she's supposed to be more intelligent than her mother, or so she thinks. She thinks less of English peers anyway. Mavis is just as awful as her mother in manipulating men to do what she wants. I did not like her.

Also arriving on the scene are the Molloys, known criminals from previous Wodehouse books. Dolly wears the pants in the family and Soapy is a brainless, weak, idiot. Wodehouse characters typically fall under those two categories. Also reappearing here is Chimp Twist, another criminal out for his own gain. He's a little more crafty than the other characters and a bit more cunning but still less intelligent than the female characters.

The only really new character here, who may not be new, just unmemorable, is Sandy Miller. She's a sweet woman who follows Monty back to England while pining for him. She knows he is engaged to Gertrude but thinks she can show Monty the error of his ways. Sandy is the complete opposite of Gertrude. She's very sweet and kind and always doing favors for people. She is a bit put upon here and there but doesn't seem to mind. The romantic plot is hardly believable but it's light and fluffy without substance like all Wodehouse romances.

Read this if you are a newcomer to Wodehouse or a Wodehouse completist. If you've read Ice In The Bedroom, The Luck of the Bodkins, you've read this one before. Wodehouse had a formula and knew how to use it but this one lacks the true screwball punch of his earlier writings.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Wodehouse doing what he does best: gleefully extracting humor from the increasingly desparate actions of dysfunctional characters caught in a complex net of romantic relationships, petty grudges, and the like.

In this case they're competing for a bunch of pearls, but in the last Wodehouse book I read, it was cow-creamer. It really doesn't matter because Wodehouse is so much fun to read that the plot itself is somehow of secondary importance.

Best of all, the opening page contains the following phrase:

She longed to run her fingers through his butter-colored hair.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monty has to hold down a job for a year to win his betrothed from her overlord father. But Sandy Miller has other ideas. With so many lively characters you can't avoid chaos! The whole affair involving Mrs. Llewellyn's pearl necklace gets everyone in a jam. I'd forgotten how much I love that thieving couple, the Molloys! This book is now up there in my favorites of P. G. Wodehouse.

[Michael F]

“Many men at such a moment would have frozen with amazement and stood silent and google-eyed. Monty was one of them.”

Hardly peak Wodehouse, but still pretty entertaining.

[Patricia Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

After finishing a lackluster book, it's so refreshing to pick up a Wodehouse and just have fun. I need to write myself a prescription and administer a regular dose of Wodehouse as a palate cleanser between books I slogged through, did not finish, or found exciting but completely exhausting.

This was the only Wodehouse at my local library. I can hope there were more that were checked out, but I suspect that when the books get old and worn, they are probably discarded and not replaced with new copies. I know. That's just shocking. Anyway, it wasn't until I finished reading that I found out that this is the last in a series about Monty Bodkin. I shall have to see if the others are available somewhere in our library system.

Interestingly, I see that this book was also published under the title, Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin.

[S. Suresh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wodehouse wrote Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972) (U.S. title The Plot That Thickened), as a sequel to Luck of the Bodkins (1935), an incredible 37 years later. His signature wit and charm are still evident in this book. And for a good measure, the sequel factually holds true, but Wodehouse does commit a significant error in mentioning Monty Bodkin has no relations in the English aristocracy. Astute followers of Wodehouse’s characters would remember that Monty Bodkin is the nephew of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, both of whom we meet in the Blandings Castle story Heavy Weather. Considering Wodehouse was 91 when he wrote this sequel, one ought to make allowances, however, this fact is quite relevant to the plot of this story.

Monty, still engaged to Getrude Butterwick, and willing to subject himself to her officious father’s whims, eventually falls in love with Sandy Miller for a happy ending. The story itself is not one of his best, and even the appearance of the crooked threesome, Soapy & Dolly Molloy along with Chimp Twist, doesn’t do much to pep up the plot.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He was overcome by the poignancy of the situation. Here was a girl who frankly admitted that in her opinion he was Prince Charming galloping up on his white horse and would have liked nothing better than to be folded in his embrace and hugged till her ribs squeaked, and here was he all eagerness to the folding and hugging, and no chance of business resulting because the honor of the Bodkins said it mustn't. Beat that for irony, he thought as he rubbed his shin. It was the sort of thing Thomas Hardy would have got a three-volume novel out of."

This is the first P. G. Wodehouse I've read, and it was quite delightful.

[Highlandtown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great Wodehouse read. Panther women, con artists, romance and an import-export merchant.
“It cannot be insisted on too strongly that import and export merchants as a class do not read other people’s letters. Few branches of commerce have a stricter code. Nevertheless, it must be stated that between Mr. Butterwick’s catching sight of this one and his leaping at it like a seal going after a slice of fish only a few seconds elapsed.”

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorite descriptive paragraphs is in this book. How the protagonist falls in love as he watches his secretary lift the garbage can of glass bottles to hit the constable in the head (thus saving his skin). It's really great.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book features Soapy and Dolly Molloy, two of my favorite recurring Wodehouse characters. I enjoyed the narrator's asides, too.

[寿理 宮本 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reminds me of a stage play, probably. I'd expect it to be, anyway, or maybe a British film.

The writing is hilarious in its use of irony. Everything became a twisty love polyhedron with one tie keeping things together, and one twisty asterisk of thievery, with so many people pulling at one string of pearls. It almost feels a little TOO neat that everything tied up cleanly with, essentially, one change of heart (Monty's).

I think the only thing that keeps me from LOVING the story is that ALL the characters are a little bit terrible. Granted, in the end, MOST of them (or, the important ones, anyway) got exactly what they wanted. It's a pretty fun read, but I'm not so invested in the characters that I'd want to keep the book on my shelf forever. (Little libraries for the win!)

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A late season return to form. While not a gut-buster of laughs, the perfectly wry language is a joy to read and, as with almost all Wodehouse novels, true love is bound to win out.

[Nicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never fails to amuse me. Love the writing style. Love the characters.
I noticed that Douglas Wilson's writing style is very similar to Wodehouse. Cool.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love PG Wodehouse. He makes me laugh out loud.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems that most P. G. Wodehouse novels that have made an impression on me have been set in the 1930s or early 40s. So, it was rather with amazement that I ran into the following line in The Plot That Thickened: “My husband wouldn’t have the nerve to cheat on me if you brought him all the girls in the Christmas number of Playboy asleep on a chair.” (p. 52) Knowing that the magazine didn’t appear on newsstands until the 1950s, I suddenly felt the urge to check the copyright date. 1973? I didn’t know he was still publishing in 1973—even if he did die in 1975.
Now, I don’t know if Wodehouse actually penned this novel in the ‘70s, but I do know that it is, indeed, vintage Wodehouse. There are overbearing women, femme fatales, nincompoop millionaires, heartsick romantics of both sexes, and coincidences galore that bind the cast of characters together as tightly as if they were in one large novelty finger trap. Although the plotting is as wild and wooly as any of the better-known Wodehouse novels (lots of mistaken assumptions, betrayals at various levels, and humorous first-world problems), it is the level of description mixed with interesting literary and historical allusions that make this volumes poetry to me.

At one point, Wodehouse describes a beautiful female character with an allusion to the famous Scot (Covenanter or Presbyterian) minister who daringly preached to Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. “…her whole appearance calculated to make a strong appeal to the discriminating male, though it is doubtful if someone like the late John Knox would have approved of her much.” (p. 58)
At another point, Wodehouse comments on the lack of empathy from certain characters toward the protagonist’s situation by writing: “It would have amazed Monty if he had known that what was probably the most poignant love tragedy since Abelard and Heloise could be treated with such indifference, …” (p. 135). Of course, no one experiences the emasculation and ostracism of Peter Abelard in a Wodehouse novel, but I loved the allusion. There are biblical allusions such as people formidable enough to give the appearance of the dreaded beasts in the Book of Revelation. One character even suggests a message is so significant he “…clutched it to my bosom, penciling it in as manna in the wilderness…” (p. 98) – a mixed metaphor I suppose, but a delightful one. When one character gets over his fear of another, he considers his former trepidation as, “Less than the dust beneath his chariot wheels, if he remembered the quotation correctly…” (p. 209)

While considering indifference to a romance, note the following sad commentary: “So far from rejoicing that two loving hearts were to be joined together in holy wedlock, they gave the impression that they would have been glad to have heard that the owners of these two hearts had come down with cholera morbus and were not expected to recover.” (p. 152) Now, that’s bleak!
Perhaps, not as bleak as one character’s relationship with his stepdaughter and another’s relationship with the female gender in general. As for the stepdaughter, “You had no more chance of getting her to listen to reason than an extra in a mob scene would have of trying to impose his views on a ten-thousand-a-week director.” (p. 165) For women in general, the protagonist finds himself: “…wondering dully if every member of the opposite sex whom he met was going to behave in this disturbing manner. Were they all, he asked himself, in the words of a song he sometimes sung in his bath, pistol-packing mamas, or was it just that he had bad luck in the women he associated with?” (p. 204)

It seems like Wodehouse even pokes fun at his own literary output. One character finds himself ill and our narrator comments: “He could have read a good book, but there were none.” (p. 188) Yet, the book reserves most of its parody for the head of a Hollywood studio transplanted to England on the whim of his wife and as foolish as Wodehouse felt the studio heads at MGM were when he worked there in the ‘30s (for 2.5 times what the protagonist in this novel was making per week).

The Plot That Thickened worked much better for me than The Small Bachelor, the last novel I read by Wodehouse. I understand that this may have been published under Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin, but I like this original title best. It had been quite some time since I stumbled on a Wodehouse novel and I was delighted with this find.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Mr. Llewellyn’s vocal delivery had been that of a turtledove accosting another turtledove of whom it was particularly fond…” (39).
“It was simply the thought that such a sound breaking the quiet hush of a house which had turned in for the night might cause comment that restrained the junior partners in the proposed enterprise from howling like indignant timber wolves” (64).
“He had no objection to Mr. Llewellyn describing spades as spades, but he keenly resented his reference to Gertrude Butterwick as a beefy girl with large feet” (74).
“Aristotle was all for sticking to pity and terror without a break, but he was wrong. It is a mistake to curdle the reader’s blood all the time” (87).
“Gertrude assured him that mincing was the very last thing that would happen to her words” (92).
“It was simply that she suffered from elephantiasis of the conscience” (94).
“Where before he had been a mere toad beneath the harrow, under the influence of the generous fluid he had been converted into an up-and-coming toad that seethed with rebellion and intended to take a strong line with girls who did not mince their words when seated at their writing desks” (108-109).
“Here Mavis did Monty an injustice, for he was not noticeably piefaced. Sandy Miller, indeed, from the very start of their acquaintance had thought his features super” (164).
“He had commented to Sandy on the resemblance, as seen by an employee at Llewellyn City, between this man and the less lovable fauna of the Book of Revelations…” (182).
“‘Talk sense,’ she said curtly, giving in two words evidence that her disbelief had not come within a million miles of being suspended” (198).
“As she put it to herself, she had no more ideas than a rabbit, and everyone who has studied these animals knows how devoid they normally are of inspiration” (199).
“...she had always held the view that if he had had an ounce more sense, he would have been half-witted” (215).

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, first things first. This is absolutely ridiculous. And yes, Wodehouse is rather sexist. And it's set in some time warp between the 1920s and the 1960s (a crucial scene takes place in a speakeasy). And yet--

It's utterly, completely delightful. I laughed out loud several times, and I adore Wodehouse's turns of phrase. Since I don't have the book in front of me, I can't give exact citations, but there is the time, for example, when a testy middle-aged man tells his young employee to stop imitating an echo in the Swiss alps. Its just such fun.

The plot, such as it is, involves a young layabout, Monty, who wants to get married. His beloved's father insists he has to hold down a job for a year. Needless to say, there are complications. Further complications arise when thieves (one disguising himself as a detective) try to steal a pearl necklace, and then--

But you get the idea. Either you like Wodehouse, or you don't. If you like Wodehouse, and haven't read this, you'll almost certainly enjoy it. If you haven't read Wodehouse, this might not be a bad place to start, though Jeeves and Wooster might be better.

[☯Emily Ginder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first P.G. Wodehouse book I read. I have read it four times and laugh all the way through each time. I love Wodehouse's characters and stories.

12/25/23: I bought this book on sale in NYC soon after I moved back to NJ. It was my first experience with a P. G. Wodehouse book and I loved it so much that I reread it quite often. Since then I have read many Wodehouse books, so after rereading this after 25 years was both a joy and a disappointment. Anything by Wodehouse is a joy, but after reading many other of his books you realize that the formula is the same and the outcomes are the same. Therefore, I was disappointed.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aptly titled. I didn't find Monty Bodkin the most sympathetic of Wodehouse characters, but it was still a fun read. It won't stand up to the best of the Jeeves books. The ending seemed abrupt and little anticlimactic. There were certainly a few good twists and, as always, some great turns of phrase.

[Ashutosh Sahu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not the best Wodehouse, but I enjoyed finding this obscure work that did not involve Jeeves nor Psmith nor Golf.

In fact the only thing tying it to the Wodehouse universe is the Drones Club, cf Oofy Prosser.

**minor spoilers**

Also memorable is the drunken divorce at the end... by the standards of Middle Comedy and PGW himself, this is controversial stuff ;)

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wodehouse is wondrous! How can you go wrong with characters named Monty Bodkin and Gertrude Butterwick?

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun times ~ Quality P.G. Wodehouse (especially since one of the plot drivers is a Vassar girl!) with a few cute references to other members of the Drones club... but I only laughed out loud 3 times.

[Faith B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ha, I lurve P.G. Wodehouse. He's always funny and silly and very good for when you just want an easy read that's somewhat intelligent.

[Kathryn Rosenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would rate it higher, but that Wodehouse novels flit right out of my head moments after I put them down. I couldn't tell you what this one was about, just that I know I enjoyed it while I read it.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another hit with Wodehouse - just can't go wrong with PG.

[Cathy0584 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it's the attraction of a slightly more innocent episode in time--the appeal of Wodehouse's characters and their mishaps strike me as a breath of fresh air. This one is delightful.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a joy to revel in Wodehouse's world! Great laughs on every page, phrases you want to remember forever. Twists and turns and always the world turns out just right! Wonderful escape!

[James Swenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The aunts of the lovestruck protagonist did not appear in this book; they were missed.

[Alexandra S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silly but lovely.