What next

by George S Miller

Jim Grant has always expected to become a millionaire when his guardian died. But now the late Uncle Alf's attorneys tell him that, although the estate is his alone, only £500 of the fortune remains. A crestfallen Jim mulls over the few ways in which a young gentleman with no work experience can earn a living. None of these will allow him to achieve his to convince Mary Steele to marry him. He resolves to economize, first by giving up his house and his valet, Lush.But Lush has other plans. In fact, this quiet, efficient man from the background of Jim Grant's life is brimming with ideas. The proposition he makes to his employer requires the precious £500, but it promises fun and excitement and it may—just may—change both men's lives for the better.

77 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1921

Reviews

[Jonathan Bogart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burning through some light fiction as a means to an end; Mackail was another Wodhouse pal (and brother to novelist Angela Thirkell) whose novels were pleasantly dull, thoroughly middle-class, and generally pretty frivolous. (That last is usually a good thing in my book.) What Next? is a profoundly inconsequential story, perhaps the most notable aspect of which is an attempt to lend the Jeeves-Wooster dynamic a bit more psychological realism (thereby making it all the more unbelievable). In bare outline, it's a Wodehouse plot, but Mackail is so conscientiously dull a chronicler that it's not until the third act that events take on the farcical tone they should have had all along. It's still preposterously sweet and unthinkingly reactionary, in the way practically all popular English fiction was at the time (the plot includes a hefty if sub rosa amount of antisemitism), but Mackail's an engaging and amusing enough writer that there's plenty of enjoyment, especially in the last third.

[Janis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious, witty, from the Bright Young Things era..what with valets and spats and houses in the country there is a hint of P.G. Wodehouse but the characters here are more believable...many laugh out loud moments...exceedingly entertaining, it kept me engrossed to the end..