'A nostalgic variation' … Sebastian Faulks. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the GuardianSebastian Faulks's take on Jeeves and Wooster could receive the ultimate accolade for a novel that sets out to mimic PG Wodehouse, an author who Faulks himself describes as "inimitable", after making the shortlist for the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction.
The award – which takes as its full title the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize – is for the work of fiction which best "captures the comic spirit" of Wodehouse. Faulks's Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, fully authorised by the Wodehouse estate, takes Bertie Wooster and his gentleman's gentleman on new adventures. Despite pre-publication concerns – Wodehouse biographer Robert McCrum said "it looks perilously like Mission Impossible to me"; reviewer Sam Leith that "if, as an author, you were hoping to see how quickly you could bury your reputation underneath a hail of brickbats, there couldn't be many better ways of setting about it than taking it upon yourself to write a PG Wodehouse sequel" – Faulks was judged to have pulled it off.
The author himself wrote that he wanted to provide "a nostalgic variation – in which a memory of the real thing provides the tune and these pages perhaps a line of harmony", and reviews were positive - the Guardian called it a "wonderfully happy book". Now Jeeves and the Wedding Bells has made the Wodehouse shortlist, with the prize organisers describing the novel as a "brilliant pastiche".
Faulks will be competing with Bridget Jones's third outing from Helen Fielding, Mad About the Boy, Hanif Kureishi's tale of a young writer commissioned to write the biography of a prestigious Indian-born author, The Last Word, John Niven's Straight White Male, about an acerbic alcoholic Irish novelist, and Joseph O'Connor's The Thrill of It All, the story of a London-Irish rock band.
The shortlist is completed with Edward St Aubyn's Lost for Words, a novel that has split reviewers so far: the Guardian found it to be "stony-hearted and gruellingly unfunny", but the Independent said the novelist's riposte to literary prize culture was "witty [and] often excoriating".
The line-up was picked by judges Peter Florence, director of the Hay festival, David Campbell, Everyman's Library publisher, and broadcaster James Naughtie. Campbell said that it was one of the strongest line-ups the 15-year-old prize had ever had. "All the books on the list are of great calibre and quality which makes the job of choosing just one of these witty, zestful novels as the winner almost impossible," he added.
The winner will be announced on 19 May, and will receive, amongst offerings of champagne and Wodehouse novels, the honour of having a locally-bred Gloucestershire Old Spot pig named after their winning novel. Previous winners of the prize include Howard Jacobson, twice, Terry Pratchett and Marina Lewycka, with pigs named respectively Zoo Time, Kalooki Nights, Snuff and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.
