Comedy is quite possibly the most difficult genre to write because something 'being funny' has a much wider range of subjectivity than other qualities, and even the things we think are funny generally can fall flat due to some lack of je ne sais quoi.

I went into 'Portuguese Irregular Verbs' right on the heels of 'Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit' by fellow British humorist P.G. Wodehouse (side note: if you enjoyed this novella, you should check out the Jeeves series). Both rely on similar comedic mechanics: linguistic humor relying on clever turns of phrase, the carnivalesque, absurd misunderstandings and assumptions (often going hand in hand with those carnivalesque aspects), and this omnipresent 'social commentary' element.

Both of them are indeed, to my satisfaction, very funny.

The episodic nature of 'Portuguese Irregular Verbs' works when it works, but drags when it doesn't. The first five stories are tight and fast-paced, and deftly balance situational and linguistic humor. The final three, however, suffer from the fact that the basic premises just aren't that funny. The set ups are simply too mundane and grounded to be good springboards for this type of comedy. Tone is also a bigger problem in these three stories, especially the last one, ;Death in Venice.' And unfortunately, ending on such a wrong note really colored my feelings of the collection as a whole. It's a shame, because it started off so strong and some of the jokes and situations were so well done that I actually laughed aloud at points.

For instance, in one episode, our protagonist travels to Italy and discovers that the innkeeper is deeply prejudiced against German tourists, and so spends his entire trip trying to disprove the stereotypes she has, to the detriment of his own holiday and to the reader's great amusement).

This type of set-up is really good because the stakes are actually incredibly low, and the artificial raising of those stakes lays fertile ground for humor.

On the other hand, we had chapter seven wherein the protagonist falls in love with his dentist and attempts to woo her. Not only are the stakes here higher, but many of the punchlines are more meanspirited.

In the Italian episode, one of the innkeeper's stereotypes is that Germans eat too much. To disprove this, he increasingly accepts less food from her for dinner, but is then so hungry that he tries to seek out opportunities to get food elsewhere in town only to continue running into the innkeeper. Again, very low stakes, something he does to himself that he could undo at any time, and not harmful to anyone.

In the dentist story, our protagonist gifts his dentist a copy of his book on Portuguese Irregular Verbs as a token of his affection for her and later sees that she uses it as a step-stool. This type of 'joke' just doesn't land as well because it's not ~really~ funny; it's kind of sad both that she didn't really like the gift and also that her not liking his gift is an indication that she's not very interested in him.

In any event, the first five stories are well worth the price of admission, and I think it's a shame no one encouraged author Alexander McCall Smith to leave the others on the cutting room floor.