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A review by thenovelbook
Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allen
4.0
Well, this novel is, shall we say, comprehensive.
Lois Cayley's stepfather dies. He is her last near relation and she is left penniless, so she quite naturally decides to take a trip around the world. Who wouldn't? Along the way she hunts out new sources of income, or sometimes things find her. By turns she is a temporary lady's maid for a cantankerous old woman, a bicycle racer, a living bicycle advertisement and saleswoman, house sitter, preventer of theft and fraud, tiger hunter (I don't like that part), journalist, honored guest of a maharajah, and entrepreneur. In the end she has to turn detective, because her fiance is accused of forging his uncle's will. Turns out the will really is forged, but it's an exact forged copy of the real will. Why would anyone need to forge, unaltered, a copy of a will? I leave it to your imagination (or read the book).
Lois turns out to be a rather comical narrator, and I'm glad that I finally determined that this is not a book to be taken seriously, because it would be impossible. I chuckle when she says things like,
"My employer wrote, 'You are a born journalist.'
I confess this surprised me; for I have always considered myself a truthful person."
And the pictures! Lots of old books of this sort have the occasional sketch scattered throughout, but this one has pictures every few pages, so that you might accurately imagine Lois' latest escapade.
Although there are no noticeable puns or plays on language, I have to say that I think this author is literarily (but not literally) related to P.G. Wodehouse. A similar sense of the ridiculous, and frequently over-the-top, but everything comes right by the end of the episode. Yes, this book is written in episodes, tied together by a few common threads.
Some may want to take note that there are a dozen or so uses of the N-word around the middle of the book, but only out of the mouth of a character you are not supposed to like anyway. Oddly enough, he's not talking about people of African descent, but those from India.
Lois Cayley's stepfather dies. He is her last near relation and she is left penniless, so she quite naturally decides to take a trip around the world. Who wouldn't? Along the way she hunts out new sources of income, or sometimes things find her. By turns she is a temporary lady's maid for a cantankerous old woman, a bicycle racer, a living bicycle advertisement and saleswoman, house sitter, preventer of theft and fraud, tiger hunter (I don't like that part), journalist, honored guest of a maharajah, and entrepreneur. In the end she has to turn detective, because her fiance is accused of forging his uncle's will. Turns out the will really is forged, but it's an exact forged copy of the real will. Why would anyone need to forge, unaltered, a copy of a will? I leave it to your imagination (or read the book).
Lois turns out to be a rather comical narrator, and I'm glad that I finally determined that this is not a book to be taken seriously, because it would be impossible. I chuckle when she says things like,
"My employer wrote, 'You are a born journalist.'
I confess this surprised me; for I have always considered myself a truthful person."
And the pictures! Lots of old books of this sort have the occasional sketch scattered throughout, but this one has pictures every few pages, so that you might accurately imagine Lois' latest escapade.
Although there are no noticeable puns or plays on language, I have to say that I think this author is literarily (but not literally) related to P.G. Wodehouse. A similar sense of the ridiculous, and frequently over-the-top, but everything comes right by the end of the episode. Yes, this book is written in episodes, tied together by a few common threads.
Some may want to take note that there are a dozen or so uses of the N-word around the middle of the book, but only out of the mouth of a character you are not supposed to like anyway. Oddly enough, he's not talking about people of African descent, but those from India.