Love Among the Chickens

Description

Love Among the Chickens is a typical and at the same atypical novel by P. G. Wodehouse – it is typical because it features the authors characteristic style that entertains and amuses the reader all the way and atypical because it was practically written two times by Wodehouse, once in 1906 and then again for the second publication in 1921.

The principal character in the book is Jeremy Garet, a writer working on his next book. He is visited by his long-time friend, Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge (one of Wodehouse’s recurring short story characters, but appearing for the first and only time in one of his novels) and his new wife. Ukridge starts explaining to Garet how he is going to get rich soon and how his plan involves farming chicken in Dorset and he also convinces the writer to accompany him and his wife to the farm. On the way to Dorset they meet a girl named Phyllis and her father, a professor, who later turn out to be the Ukridges’ neighbors. Garnet invents all sorts of plots to get closer to the girl, he even pays a local to upset the boat of the professor while the old man is fishing just to save him and earn the old man’s, and through him, his daughter’s respect.

The chicken farm has lots of problems in the meantime – the animals become ill – and being humiliated by the professor, Garnet buries himself into his work. He eventually confesses his love to Phyllis and it turns out that the girl returns his feelings, but her father opposes the marriage. However, when Garnet and the professor are faced with each other again in a golf tournament and Garnet lets the old man win, he also wins the professor’s consent to marry Phyllis. In the meantime, the Ukridges disappear to escape their creditors, who come and are ransacking the farm when Ukridge returns with lots of money, pays them off and then leaves to spend some time on the beach, planning his next successful business enterprise – a duck farm.
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