Bachelors Anonymous by P G Wodehouse
A writer's voice is a powerful thing. Amongst the prolific ones, the voice is like a beacon, guiding readers towards the end of the book, not letting the readers' interest flag through repetitive and sometimes scarcely believable plotlines. For the discerning reader, it also helps in separating the wheat from the chaff in the writer's oeuvre.
Bachelors Anonymous is one such novel that anyone somewhat familiar with Wodehouse's writing will file like struggle to call it among his good ones for it is his voice and charm that sees readers through the end. You get a vague sense of characters' lives, shared love and fortunes before they all dissolve into a happily ever after. They do however keep bumping into each other as clumsily and as regularly as an old man and the nook of the table. The detective assigned to look after you is betrothed to the philanderer with whom you were once engaged; you are led to this detective by a solicitor who is a dear friend of the playwright you are falling for; the playwright becomes the right hand man for a producer whom you are slated to interview - all of this should give you enough reason to pause and suspect the intentions of the hand that guides you. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and thrice is enemy action. Fourth time lets you realize the paucity of imagination that afflicted the author while he was writing the book. But you wouldn't care less when you are having fun.
The name of the novel takes after the collective that has so successfully helped the men and women of the world slip away from the grips of their addictions. Only here, it is just men and it is the welfare of the singles that the collective so zealously looks after, the addiction being their inability to stop themselves from proposing marriage to the womenfolk. Their dubious intentions are shown up for what they are when their leader falls for someone (nay thrown to the ground by her dog) and very quickly realizes that his life can do with a female companion by his side.
This being Wodehouse however, your interest holds up. It seldom wanders or wavers- the writer's charm the one thing that will keep you hooked to its pages. And that is largely sufficient for a breezy little book like this one.
Bachelors Anonymous is one such novel that anyone somewhat familiar with Wodehouse's writing will file like struggle to call it among his good ones for it is his voice and charm that sees readers through the end. You get a vague sense of characters' lives, shared love and fortunes before they all dissolve into a happily ever after. They do however keep bumping into each other as clumsily and as regularly as an old man and the nook of the table. The detective assigned to look after you is betrothed to the philanderer with whom you were once engaged; you are led to this detective by a solicitor who is a dear friend of the playwright you are falling for; the playwright becomes the right hand man for a producer whom you are slated to interview - all of this should give you enough reason to pause and suspect the intentions of the hand that guides you. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and thrice is enemy action. Fourth time lets you realize the paucity of imagination that afflicted the author while he was writing the book. But you wouldn't care less when you are having fun.
The name of the novel takes after the collective that has so successfully helped the men and women of the world slip away from the grips of their addictions. Only here, it is just men and it is the welfare of the singles that the collective so zealously looks after, the addiction being their inability to stop themselves from proposing marriage to the womenfolk. Their dubious intentions are shown up for what they are when their leader falls for someone (nay thrown to the ground by her dog) and very quickly realizes that his life can do with a female companion by his side.
This being Wodehouse however, your interest holds up. It seldom wanders or wavers- the writer's charm the one thing that will keep you hooked to its pages. And that is largely sufficient for a breezy little book like this one.
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