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.
Critic Reviews
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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PopMatters Jonathan Messinger
It is quintessential Ames: uproarious, ludicrous and something of a stretch.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
Ames's inventive romp follows its hero into very un-Wodehousian territory.
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Favorable
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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.
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Favorable
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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
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Mixed
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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.
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