Then We Came to the End: A Novel | Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End: A Novel | Joshua Ferris | Safety in Numbers

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Then We Came to th...

	Then We Came to the End: A Novel Joshua Ferris Little, Brown and Company, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 202 reviews view larger image
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Living up to the hype

I was intrigued by Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End when I read the NY Times review of it. However, I was a little wary of the first person plural conceit of the telling. Would it be too cutesy? Would it just be a novel whose sole highlight is the unusual point of view? Having read it, I can honestly say the book lives up to the hype. The story takes place in a Chicago ad agency during the summer of 2001. The "we" who narrates the story is everybody--the people in the office. You know them. You may be one of them. Many of us have been in workplaces where there was this collective sense of self, where people talked amongst themselves so frequently that you couldn't always remember where you heard a particular bit of news, you just knew it by osmosis, and where although you felt part of a large "we" that had no real secrets you still had no clue as to the inner lives of your co-workers. Honestly, the first person plural is the only way this book could have been written--it wouldn't have worked any other way. Ferris is enormously talented and lets this point of view work for him. Then We Came to the End is funny and true to life, and it has one of the most satisfying final lines of any novel in recent memory. I've been recommending it to everybody.

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Safety in Numbers

Ferris' use of a plural first-person narrative voice in this book about the daily struggles of mid-level advertising executives isn't the royal we. Instead, it's the degrading corporate we that took over America in the 1990s in an attempt to get ever more work from the individual by convincing him he was part of something larger than himself (like a team or even a crusade). If that's all there was, however, this book would simply be sad -- a jumbled collection of post-9/11 Dilbert-esque anecdotes. Instead, it's a hilarious (and sometimes introspective) rant against the powers that be, along with the belated discovery that most Americans are too afraid to escape the rat-race and live as the unique, beautiful, creative individuals they believe themselves to be. After all, it's always safer to be a rat.

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dark comedy

I enjoyed this black comedy of cubicle life. The first part entranced me with its dry humor and spot-on depiction of the lives of corporate drones. The middle section was darker -- an more searching exploration of the psyche of those who confuse their work with their lives -- or more accurately have no lives. Then the jocular tone returns for the final section.
The author is very skillful in the way he gradually brings the various characters to life, although they do remain someone opaque. We get to know them in a similar way to the way we get to know our own work colleagues. We see their little tics and peculiarities but we only see part of them -- the work part. The rest remains unknowable to us.
This book has been compared to "Catch 22." I don't think it's quite up to that level, simply because the subject matter -- the folly of war versus the folly of office life -- can't be compared.
Having said this, this is a fun read -- a little sad, a little funny, a little disturbing.

For more on me and my book The Nazi Hunter: A Novel go to www.alanelsner.com

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Fun, inconsistent 2007 novel on life at a failing ad agency

Joshua Ferris' acclaimed debut novel depicts a fading millennial Chicago advertising agency. The first-person narrator is an anonymous employee who seems to express the collective thoughts of the group while walking the reader around the office and sharing stories. Ferris populates this fictional agency with a richly drawn cast of employees. The accounts of office minutia are usually hilarious and realistic (one employee tries to pass an entire day without touching his computer keyboard) but occasionally neither (the tiresome discussion of office chair switches). The team faces the constant threat of layoffs (they call it "walking Spanish") during the post-Internet bubble advertising slump. Agency owner Lynn's struggle with breast cancer is a key theme of the novel. A segment of the book abruptly shifts from the office to a third person omniscient view of Lynn that, while dignified, disrupts the flow of this fictional work. This strong modern novel is recommended: I read this a few months ago and it still occasionally is in my thoughts.

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