I am thinking of investing in the audiobook of this novel, but I’m not quite sure that it’s going to be funny enough because based on how funny bored to death, the TV show is I don’t think this writer really has what it takes to be a PG Wodehouse. The only thing that keeps me from not jumping right in is the cost of the audiobook. I have read other Jeeves satires, and they’re usually pretty good. The main thing about this one is the butler character is named Jeeves and he doesn’t really exist. He’s a figment of the main characters imagination. ( )

I wish Jeeves were more omnipotent and omniscient. ( )

Ames can capture P. G. Wodehouse's writing style quite well, and often he exceeds Wodehouse's humor. However, where Wodehouse's plots were either genuinely innovative or the stuff of pulp novels, Ames tries too hard to be quirky and unexpected. In the end, the wackiness just doesn't add up to much, story- or character-wise. ( )

Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames
1.5 stars, rounded to 2

Although this book got off to a rollicking start and it seemed as though it would be 3 or 4 stars like most of the Wooster and Jeeves books this is a play on, and although there were some funny scenes, it just wasn't for me due to some of the key differences between the two fools, Bertie Wooster in the original and Alan Blair in this book.

Alan Blair is an American agnostic Jew, a struggling writer who received a quarter of a million dollars in a lawsuit and so hired a personal valet, Jeeves, and certainly he notes that he likes the name because of Wodehouse's books. I am not going to give a plot summary. Suffice to say that the reason this book failed for me is because much of the humour was darker, playing off of Blair's depression, neuroses and deep alcoholism, and while in the TV show Monk's neuroses were funny, I just don't find depression or alcoholism funny, nor drunk people. Although there was a marijuana scene I found rather funny, which was a bit of a surprise, but I don't want to say why in case this is a book you like.

Jonathan Ames can certainly write humour, it just wasn't my cup of tea. ( )

A pitch perfect style-parody of P. G. Wodehouse, or more specifically of Bertie Wooster, "Wake Up, Sir!" is a book with a target audience so vanishingly small that it's a wonder it was every published. But being a member of that target audience, I enjoyed every syllable.

The juxtaposition of the modern setting and sexual topics with the Wodehousian prose afforded not a little enjoyment. Ames has an ear for the well placed metaphor which, if not the rival of Wodehouse, is at least in the same style.

I keep comparing to Wodehouse, but "Wake Up, Sir!" is a story in its own right, with an engaging cast of characters and some interesting embedded philosophy. It's a bit scattered, and feels like a selection of a much longer story, or perhaps that's just because it is a slice of a much longer life. Either way, this has made me likely to pick up something else by Ames in the future, although I will be a bit disappointed when I get a voice other than Bertie Wooster's.

Highly recommended for Wodehouse fans. For anyone else, you'll have to make up your own mind. ( )