Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

The bff and I are both big fans of Wodehousian humor, so while trawling a Best-Of list last year, I stumbled across a glowing review of this novel, recently out in paperback, and thought I’d buy us a copy. Gave it to him for Christmas, and he passed it back to me recently to read over my birthday. It is certainly an updating of the Jeeves conceit, with a narrator who is a modern-day, American Bertie. One wonders if the modern-day, American equivalent would necessarily be as neurotic as our protagonist Alan Blair, tho. I found the best parts to definitely be the beginning and end, when Jonathan Ames hews more closely to Wodehousian plot structure, than the middle, where Blair flounders with Questions and neuroses and a rather charmless hyper-self-consciousness. Overall, a satisfying book for a Wodehousian completist, but given the choice, I’d rather read one of John Mortimer’s modern-day Rumpoles, such as this one, instead.