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Wake Up, Sir!
by Jonathan Ames


9.3

based on 9 reviews
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based on 3 votes
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A young writer and his valet (Jeeves, after the famous P.G. Wodehouse creation) have to flee New Jersey and go into hiding first in a Hasidic colony and then in an artist's commune.

Scribner, 352 pages
07/13/2004
$23.00

ISBN: 0743230043

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Kirkus Reviews

Pungent and hilarious, if completely off the deep end: Ames is like a perpetual undergraduate jokester, whom you either love or hate on first sight.

Library Journal Joanna M. Burkhardt

Ames's fourth novel strings readers along in a madcap adventure complete with a lively and varied set of characters. There is something for everyone here.

PopMatters Jonathan Messinger

It is quintessential Ames: uproarious, ludicrous and something of a stretch.

Publishers Weekly

Ames's tale zips along, brimming with comedy and wild details, proving him to be a winning storyteller and a consummate, albeit exceedingly eccentric, entertainer.

The New York Times Book Review Henry Alford

n the same way that ''The Sopranos'' and the ''Analyze This'' movies mine the humor found at the intersection of the talking cure and tough-guy omerta, Ames's book pits the self-lacerating gush of alcoholism-in-transition against the cool detachment of the English hospitality industry; ''Wake Up, Sir!'' is a Wodehouse novel for the recovery era.

The New Yorker

Ames's inventive romp follows its hero into very un-Wodehousian territory.

Village Voice Ed Park

Here is a book, rigorous as a dream and well ventilated with wit, in which the model of Alan's car serves as the perfect metaphor. Id est, a classic of caprice.

Washington Post Dennis Drabelle

Ames can produce a pretty good facsimile of Wodehousean badinage, some of it sharpened to a 21st-century edge. You'll find plenty more such quipping in the book, along with graphic sex, ludicrous mishaps and even a few literary judgments

Entertainment Weekly Troy Patterson

Wake Up, Sir's pair head to a writers' colony, survive a few funny binges, and weather Alan's discovery of his nose fetish, but their antics amount to secondhand cleverness, dandruff on the shoulders of giants.

The average user rating for this book is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
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Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

Wake Up, Sir!
by Jonathan Ames