First you have to accept that a 30-year-old alcoholic novelist would have a personal butler named Jeeves.

No easy task.

But well worth the leap: It’s the price of admission to Wake Up, Sir!, Jonathan Ames’s new novel. Follow Alan Blair, charismatic boozer and Wodehouse-esque snob, to an artists’ enclave called the Rose Colony, where he basks in his good fortune while revealing little-known secrets of the writer’s craft: “You don’t want the tax-paying public to know about the creative process — how much napping and procrastinating are involved.” Meanwhile, Ames peels back the layers of Alan’s elitism and vintage Brooks Brothers sport coats, leaving us with a gimlet-eyed look at the subversive alliance between alcohol and writing — along with a winning dose of brutal honesty and bottled-up heart.

Definitely worth suspending a little disbelief for.

Available online at amazon.com and at your local bookstore.