In these early stories and novellas Wodehouse tells of British schoolboys and school with his characteristic but not yet fully developed humor. There are the standard misunderstandings that bloom into slapstick minor disasters, but again, not quite as comedic in his later work. This collection is valuable as a precursor to the later fully formed Wodehouse. ( )

Didn't enjoy this one as much as some of the other P. G. Wodehouse school stories. Perhaps because it was his first published book and he wasn't really into his stride as a writer. It didn't hang together as well as his later works, and I never really felt that I cared very much about the characters, perhaps because the point of view chops and changes a fair bit.

Interesting to read about 'jellygraphing' as an early form of duplication though... ( )

This is one of his earliest books and I have to say that I found it quite befuddling 90% of the time. It's set at a public school (actually private, called public because it prepares students for public service) in England at the turn of the century. I think in order to follow the plot, you would have to have been a student at an English public school at the turn of the century. It's full of races and sporting events and school prefects and houses and cricket pavillions and all sorts of stuff like that, but it's never well-explained enough that I was able to get lost in the plot. There's definitely a HUGE difference between this writing and his later writing. Unless you're a devoted Wodehouse fan, this is entirely skippable. ( )