La femme de ménage voit tout

Freida McFadden

Description

The Man Upstairs is a collection of short stories, it is a miscellaneous collection, not featuring any of Wodehouse's regular characters; most of the stories concern love and romance.

There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind from her music. Finally, with a thrill in indignation, she knew it for what it was -- an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was intimating his views with a boot-heel. Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck -- almost slapped -- the keys once more. "Bang!" from the room above. "Bang! Bang!"

Also includes "Something to Worry About," "Deep Waters," "When Doctors Disagree," "By Advice of Counsel," "Rough-Hew Them How We Will," "The Man Who Disliked Cats," "Ruth in Exile," "Archibald's Benefit," "The Man, the Maid, and the Miasma," "The Good Angel," "Pots o'Money," "Out of School," "Three from Dunsterville," "The Tuppenny Millionaire," "Ahead of Schedule," "Sir Agravaine," "The Goal-Keeper and the Plutocrat," and "In Alcala."

Wodehouse worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career he would produce a novel in about three months but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared with comic poetry and musical comedy.

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