Wake Up [Hardcover]

Tim Pears (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2002

"Early nineteenth-century France had Balzac, we have Tim Pears" - "The Times". For John, a potato isn't just a staple food, it's also something wondrous, the secret of his success and the key to the future. With his brother, Greg, he has turned his father's greengrocery business into Spudnik, Britain's largest dealer in potatoes. Now he wants to change the world by introducing, through potatoes, edible vaccines: plants genetically modified to provide an edible alternative to injections. But as John spins round and round the ring road avoiding his turn off to work he has to figure out how to tell his brother that deep in the Venezuelan jungle, volunteers have died during the latest illegal trials. Deaths that they have to find some way to hide. "Wake Up" is a book about our times, and how we are hurtling, almost silently, into a new age with implications that are unfathomable. Funny, fluent, and provocative, it is major new novel from one of our finest contemporary writers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Early nineteenth-century France had Balzac, we have Tim Pears' - The Times 'Tim Pears specialises in grand panoramas of our national life: teeming casts and multi-tracked plotting heavy with the scent of zeitgeist' - Guardian 'His genius lies in telling a story' - Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Tim Pears was born in 1956. He is the author of three novels: IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES (winner of the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the Ruth Hadden Award), IN A LAND OF PLENTY and A REVOLUTION OF THE SUN. Tim Pears lives in Wales and Oxford.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (August 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747559570
• ISBN-13: 978-0747559573
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,178,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not As Interesting as I Had Hoped, October 10, 2003

By 

Kymberlie R. McGuire (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wake Up (Hardcover)

The novel starts out with John, co-owner of a very successful potato company in England, driving out to see his brother (and business partner) to tell him about two fatalities that occured in an experiment to give people vaccines administered by genetically altered potatoes. John is frightened to what these deaths are going to mean to his company and he can't quite get himself to take the exit he's supposed to. Almost all of this shot novel takes place on that Monday in John's car as he thinks to himself about his life and what is going to happen now.

John's thoughts wander all over the place and he frequently changes them ("Did I say (I met my wife this way, etc.) earlier? Oh no, that's not what happened at all; it was like this:..."), which kept annoying me.

Listening to John prattle on about his life never quite could get me as interested in him as I wanted to be, so the book's events never really mattered much to me. I will admit, however, that I wasn't expecting the surprise revealed at the end of the book.

Would I recommend this book to others? Probably not. I didn't really like it and ultimately, that's what I read for - enjoyment. No enjoyment out of the book means it wasn't worth my time. Good thing it was short.

3.0 out of 5 stars From Childhood to Adulthood, August 22, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Wake Up (Hardcover)

Here is a man that is torn between two worlds. One world offers him family and the other offers him the power of owning a powerful business. For someone ordinary without clear thinking will chose just one and make that one choice work for them no matter what. But here is John he is a smart one he chooses both worlds and finds happiness in both worlds.