Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin: Summary & Reading Guide

Monty’s long-awaited return after the Atlantic crossing

Monty Bodkin returns from a year of employment in Hollywood expecting that his love for Gertrude Butterwick can at last move forward. Her father’s approval remains a difficulty, and Monty’s working year is disputed. This is the sequel to The Luck of the Bodkins, published thirty-seven years after that shipboard novel but continuing its romantic thread. I like the audacity of the return: Wodehouse brings back a man whose earlier predicament had been waiting on the shelf for decades, then lets him encounter both familiar expectations and new complications without pretending that the publication gap is an in-story lifetime.

Gertrude’s father wants proof that Monty can hold a job, a condition that turns love into an examination of employment. Monty has been involved with Ivor Llewellyn’s film company, so the question is not simply whether he has worked but how that work was obtained and judged. A Wodehouse hero may believe he has fulfilled the letter of a demand only to find that the person who imposed it has a very different interpretation. The resulting disagreement provides a comic bridge from the ocean liner to the later story. Gertrude, Monty and Ivor remain people with their own opinions, not labels imported to decorate a sequel.

Chimp Twist and Soapy and Dolly Molloy also return, last seen in Ice in the Bedroom. Their criminal interests bring another plot line into Monty’s romantic business. The trio have travelled across several standalone novels since their introduction in Sam the Sudden, and it is pleasant to meet them again without requiring every earlier adventure to be recalled in detail. A sequel can continue one couple’s story while drawing other recurring figures from a wider authorial world. This book is a particularly clear case of that two-way connection.

The UK first book, Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, appeared from Barrie & Jenkins on 12 October 1972. Simon and Schuster issued the US edition on 6 August 1973 as The Plot That Thickened. The latter is a regional title, not a separate sequel. A condensed Canadian newspaper appearance in April 1973 falls between the two books. The working title The Honour of the Bodkins belongs to the manuscript history, rather than to a published first edition. These distinctions matter when a collector sees several names attached to Monty’s return.

The long interval between books is part of the reading pleasure. Wodehouse’s comic world does not age in a strict correspondence with calendar years. A year can matter to Monty’s employment while almost four decades separate the books in the reader’s world. It would be misleading to force a realistic chronology upon the characters or to imply that the later novel recounts an elderly Monty’s memories. It follows the earlier romantic circumstances, giving them another turn. A fan can enjoy the continuity while recognizing the flexible time in which Wodehouse keeps his characters.

Monty had first appeared in Heavy Weather, a Blandings novel, before taking centre stage on the S.S. Atlantic. That path makes him an especially rewarding character to follow across shelves. His appearances in Blandings and these standalones should be linked, but the two Monty books have a closer story relationship to each other than the early castle visit does. I would read The Luck of the Bodkins first for Gertrude, Ivor and the cause of the employment condition. Readers who arrive here independently can still find a lively late Wodehouse comedy, but the earlier book gives its opening situation proper weight.

Choose Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin when you are ready to revisit the shipboard hero on land. The title promises a generous crowd and enough valuable objects to disturb any clean romantic plan. The US title makes a different promise of complication. I return for the odd pleasure of a story resumed after a publishing generation and for the Molloys’ ability to make any proposed settlement less settled. Let Monty’s changing hopes unfold without demanding that the year on his employment clock match the years on the books’ spines.