The Girl on the Boat

By P. G. Wodehouse

Categories: Humor & Entertainment, Literature & Fiction

Sam Marlowe, a young Englishman sailing home from New York, falls hard for Wilhelmina "Billie" Bennett aboard the liner in The Girl on the Boat (1922; U.S. title Three Men and a Maid). He has two rivals, the gloomy poet Eustace Hignett and the tongue-tied Bream Mortimer, and an enemy in Hignett's formidable mother. When the action moves to an English country house, Sam's attempts to impress Billie keep going wrong, often in front of her.

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• Fareed Zakaria: “P. G. Wodehouse. I’ve read almost everything he wrote. He once explained that there were two ways of writing novels. “One is mine, making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right down deep into life and not caring a damn.” He did the former better than almost anyone.”