P. G. WODEHOUSE – Jill the Reckless. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1921. George H. Doran, US, hardcover, 1920. Serialised in Collier’s, US, 10 April to 28 August 1920, as “The Little Warrior,” and in Grand Magazine, UK, September 1920 to June 1921. Reprinted many times.

   A sizzling, searing look at the sleazy underside of Broadway and the downtrodden dreamers who dance desperately to the sordid melody of despair.

   Well, maybe not quite, but it is a bit different from Wodehouse’s usual thing. We get the customary mismatched engagement, disapproving dowager, silly-ass aristocrat and captivating young things in love, but Wodehouse serves it up with a bit of a change here.

   For one thing, the central character in this book is female — a rarity in Plum’s male-centered universe — a well-to-do young lady, Jill Mariner, of a rather impulsive disposition (hence the title of the piece) engaged to tall, handsome and politically rising Derek Underhill, whose domineering mother looks on the planned nuptials with something less than enthusiasm, particularly when Jill is seen chatting with a friend from her childhood, now grown into a bemusing playwright.

   With a nod to classical Greek tragedy, Wodehouse engineers a day for Jill that includes being arrested (for assaulting a man who was beating a parrot) getting jilted by Derek, and discovering that her guardian, lovable old Uncle Chris, has spent her trust fund and she is now penniless.

   Well, characters in Wodehouse novels are almost always short of cash, but they are never actually destitute and desperate as Jill is here, and in short order, Uncle Chris takes her to upstate New York and berths her with some distant and miserly relations who soon begin treating her like a servant.

   Wodehouse, however, is no David Goodis, Jill Mariner is no Jane Eyre, and we soon find her in Manhattan, employed as a chorus girl for a Broadway show-in-the-making, and being romantically pursued by the author of the show, the producer, and her bemused playwright friend who has been hired to re-write and fix it.

   But wait, there’s more: Back in London, word has got out that Derek (remember him?) jilted Jill because she went broke; bad show, that, in everyone’s opinion, and when their mutual friend Freddie (the silly-ass of the piece) tries to explain that the break-up arose from a man beating a parrot… well Wodehouse fans know what sort of scenes will ensue, and Freddie is dispatched to America to find Jill and bring her back, only to have his mission run off the tacks when he inadvertently becomes a Broadway star.

   You have guessed by now that Wodehouse’s view of struggling in the Big City is never terribly grim; when Plum writes about poverty, he treats it with the same sly humor (or humour, as he would have called it) he applied to his own deprivation in a Nazi internment camp: Keep calm and dither on.

   There is also a bit more emotional complexity here than usual. Characters in Wodehouse stories get engaged, disengaged and re-engaged with the metronomic ease of a well-oiled clockwork toy, but here there’s heartbreak to endure and be gotten over. There’s a very telling scene where Jill explains to one of her suitors that her heart is like a room full of old ugly furniture and she won’t have room for anything new there until she can get rid of the old stuff. It’s an apt metaphor, unusually melancholy for Wodehouse, and perfectly sweet.

   Fear not, though; this is still a Wodehouse novel, filled with its full quota of laughable situations and colorful characters who seem as briefly real and amusing as usual. Jill the Reckless may surprise Plum’s fans, but it won’t disappoint them.