A Damsel in Distress was first published in 1919. It involves a case of mistaken identity, a match-making stepmother, an earl who prefers gardening to writing his family history, a walk through a ditch, and many more amusing characters and incidents. It's been adapted to film at least twice, and one of the film adaptations was turned into a stage musical in 2015.
P. G. Wodehouse's books are easy to recognise because so many of them use similar plots. Unlike many authors, he managed to turn this into part of the charm of his writing. It doesn't matter that basically every book has the same cast of characters with names and roles changed; the stories are still amusing and still manage to be original.
A Damsel in Distress revolves around the chaos that ensues when George Bevan falls in love at first sight with Maud, daughter of Lord Marshmoreton. Maud's already in love with a man she hasn't seen for over a year. Her aunt wants her to marry her step-cousin Reggie, who's in love with Alice, Maud's father's secretary. Maud's brother Percy mistakes George for the man she met a year ago, and sets out to foil their "relationship". As if that wasn't complicated enough, the servants have a betting pool on who Maud will marry, and they'll do anything, even destroy letters, to get her to marry whichever man they're betting on.
It's exactly as hilarious as it sounds. I couldn't even wait for the daily installments to arrive; I went to Gutenberg and read the rest of the book there. An hour later I'd finished it, and I had a stitch in my side from laughing so hard. The misunderstandings and tangled relationships are funny enough on their own, but when described with some of the best humourous writing in the English language, they become absolutely priceless. Take, for example, this excerpt about Percy's walk through a ditch:
There is nothing half-hearted about these ditches which accompany English country roads. They know they are intended to be ditches, not mere furrows, and they behave as such. The one that sheltered Lord Belpher was so deep that only his head and neck protruded above the level of the road, and so dirty that a bare twenty yards of travel was sufficient to coat him with mud. Rain, once fallen, is reluctant to leave the English ditch. It nestles inside it for weeks, forming a rich, oatmeal-like substance which has to be stirred to be believed. Percy stirred it. He churned it. He ploughed and sloshed through it. The mud stuck to him like a brother.
And this is only one short paragraph in a book full of hilarity. To quote Cranford, "I defy you not to roar."
If you need a book guaranteed to cheer you up, or if you just want to read something light and amusing, I definitely recommend this book!
Is it available online?: Yes, on Gutenberg as well as DailyLit.
Rating: 10/10.
The plot also takes an indirect swipe at obesity resulting from one's habit of giving in to the pleasures of the table. In the concluding chapter, this is what makes Maud change her mind and start discussing marriage plans with George Bevan over phone!
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