Goodreads | Then We Came to the End

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Patrick rated it:

(review of isbn 031601639X)

05/06/08

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone who has ever worked in an office

It's funny how certain books just come along at exactly the right time in your life. I read 'Franny & Zooey' when I was right out of college and just starting my life as a post-grad in the city, and it really spoke to me. I read 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' the summer before my senior year, when I was panicking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and it completely changed the way I looked at myself and the world around me. If I had read 'Then We Came to the End'...more It's funny how certain books just come along at exactly the right time in your life. I read 'Franny & Zooey' when I was right out of college and just starting my life as a post-grad in the city, and it really spoke to me. I read 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' the summer before my senior year, when I was panicking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and it completely changed the way I looked at myself and the world around me. If I had read 'Then We Came to the End' 3 years ago, I wouldn't have understood or appreciated it as much as I do now, removed from the rat race just enough to still remember it vividly, but not so entrenched that I still harbor the same bitterness about that world.

I worked at a corporate job for just over 2 years when I was fresh out of college, and I was completely miserable doing it. The long hours, the shitty treatment from people higher up the ladder than you, the gossiping and backstabbing...it's really no way to live. And yet, even though so many of us feel this way, we still trudge to our cubicles every day and put up with the same sad song and dance day in and day out, longing for the weekends and bemoaning how quickly they pass, all while doing nothing about it, even going so far as to scoff and be incredulous about the mere prospect of making a change.

Joshua Ferris is a product of this world, but he's one of the lucky ones who found the strength to escape. His recognition of the corporate world is obvious when speaking about the universal feelings of the office worker, and his use of 1st person plural as a narrative device is the sort of gimmick that wouldn't work, or would be too precious or cute, in any other setting, but perfectly captures the tone for such an environment. By referring to each individual character in the novel on their own terms, but keeping the voice of the novel as 'we', Ferris is able to strike a perfect balance of connecting the reader to the larger picture and relating to his protagonists while also making each one feel like a real person with their own quirks and charms. Everyone knows a Benny Shassburger, the guy around the office everyone goes to to vent, or a Karen Woo, the ice queen who always seems to be right about everything. Yet the beauty of the narrative device is also connecting these individuals to the greater whole. It's easy to forget that these vibrant characters also feel the same quiet desperation as the rest of the group. It's a neat trick, and it works because a corporate office is the sort of place that fosters these common feelings among unique individuals who you never really know.

And that brings me to one of the main themes of the book (at least in my opinion), the tenuous bond we have with the people we work with. In other words, the feeling that for all the time we spend with our co-workers, we'll never really know them in any tangible way, and that, vice versa, our co-workers will know us in a way completely different (or even contrary, to) the way those close to us in our personal life will know us. For example, the totem pole that Old Brizz left to Benny, or Tom Mota's affinity for Ralph Waldo Emerson, or even Lynn Mason's much rumored battle with cancer. There are simply things about us that we don't let others see, and this book reflects that perfectly.

The end of the book was perfect as well. When you leave a workplace, you always think you'll be friends with these people forever. After all, these are the people who got you through the day, the ones whose jokes and good humor lifted your spirits when the rest of the corporate world attempted to assassinate your spirit. Then you leave, and maybe an e-mail or two is exchanged, or a drink is had after work before you completely lose touch, and, before long, you find yourself forgetting what people looked like, or unable to place the name of a person you saw every day for years. It's nobody's fault, per se; it's just what happens. People move on, they find new people to have drinks and make jokes with, different coworkers to gripe about, and new bosses to hate. This book shows that, but not in a bitter, resentful way. It just is, and Ferris acknowledges that, and the muted sadness contained in such realizations.

The book was not without its flaws, of course. There were parts that could be conceived as a little preachy or pretentious, some elements that might seem a little too fantastic for the real world. But these are minor gripes, and overall, Ferris handles it all with subtlety and aplomb. 'Then We Came to the End' is a great book that avoids (and even acknowledges, via Hank Neary towards the end) the pitfalls that can easily accompany such a novel. Required reading for anyone who has ever endured corporate life.
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Bart rated it:

01/17/08

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Bart by: New York Times Notable Books
recommends it for: Fans of MFA fiction

Because so many of the GoodReads folks are participants or graduates of MFA programs, and because Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is so obviously the product of an MFA program, I thought to hedge and give this book three stars. But that would be dishonest.

Truth is, but for 34 pages in the middle of this novel, I didn't enjoy Ferris's debut at all. Oh, it's witty and flippant and clever and occasionally funny, but ultimately it's not enjoyable.

It fails for the reason so ...more Because so many of the GoodReads folks are participants or graduates of MFA programs, and because Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is so obviously the product of an MFA program, I thought to hedge and give this book three stars. But that would be dishonest.

Truth is, but for 34 pages in the middle of this novel, I didn't enjoy Ferris's debut at all. Oh, it's witty and flippant and clever and occasionally funny, but ultimately it's not enjoyable.

It fails for the reason so many MFA-workshopped novels fail: It's a technically proficient piece of writing about unserious folks discovering truths that serious persons generally know long before their 30th birthdays.

Then We Came to the End begins like a sequel to the movie "Office Space", written by Chuck Palahniuk. It's written in the first-person plural, which is about the extent of its original contributions. We this, and we that. It's neither annoying nor enticing - but it seems to want to provoke commentary.

On Page 2, we get this insight: "Our boredom was ongoing, a collective boredom, and it would never die because we would never die."

One of the great discoveries that happens in this novel, over the next 384 pages, is that persons do, as it turns out, die. At the very end of the novel - six years later - we learn that a number of the officemates in fact died. Why kill off these innocuous folks? Who knows? maybe to appear serious?

But there's a piece of writing, an accomplishment of actual storytelling, that begins on Page 196 and treats the pathos of a person recently diagnosed with breast cancer. All the zaniness and shallowness of the novel's first half are temporarily forgotten while Ferris does an exceptionally good job of writing. From Page 196 to 230, this novel transcends itself and its pedigree. These 30 pages are the novel's best pages, and Ferris (or his editor) knows it.

How do we know he knows it? Because after another 150 or so pages of cleverly describing office luncheons and chair-swapping capers and employee layoffs, Ferris comes back to it. He gives his least memorable character the task of reuniting all the unlikable folks from the office, six years after their end, for a reading of his novel.

What excerpt is read? Part of the breast-cancer story from pages 196-230.

On Then We Came to the End's back cover, an author named Jim Shepard writes, "The real revelation here is how moving it all becomes . . ." I disagree....less

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Patrick rated it:

08/29/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: promising debut novelist addicts

I LIKED:
(1) How funny it was;
(2) The first-person-plural voice, which could have backfired but didn't for me;
(3) The guy who quotes Emerson (it was around here that I started to feel actual warmth for the characters, even when I couldn't keep them straight);
(4) The Catch-22ishness (though it wasn't slavishly Catch-22esque, which you might initially think);
(5) The very last line, which maybe could be considered gimmicky, but worked for me and which I read with what I guess I ...more

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Gregory rated it:

06/08/08

Read in December, 2007

“Do you realize how insane we’ve all become?”

In the post-Dilbert world of “The Office,” examinations of the everyday absurdities and indignities of office culture have become more and more commonplace. But rarely are they captured with such acuity, humor and grace as in Joshua Ferris’ stellar debut novel, “Then We Came to the End” (a New York Times top 5 fiction book of 2007). Office ennui is relatively easy to portray because, let’s be honest, anyone who has eve...more “Do you realize how insane we’ve all become?”

In the post-Dilbert world of “The Office,” examinations of the everyday absurdities and indignities of office culture have become more and more commonplace. But rarely are they captured with such acuity, humor and grace as in Joshua Ferris’ stellar debut novel, “Then We Came to the End” (a New York Times top 5 fiction book of 2007). Office ennui is relatively easy to portray because, let’s be honest, anyone who has ever worked in an office has experienced it firsthand. But Ferris goes deeper than that; he does nothing less than capture the zeitgeist of inter-office relations and how it affects us as human beings, smoothly wrapping it all up in a bitterly funny package.

The cubicle-dwellers inhabiting “Then We Came to the End” and its unnamed advertising agency are, by nature, not the stuff of epic fiction. This, as Ferris so aptly puts it, is “a story set in the pages of an Office Depot catalog, of lives not nearly as interesting as an old man and the sea, or watery-world dwellers dispelling the hypos with a maniacal peg-leg.” These are real, everyday people struggling to maintain their humanity in a corporate environment that threatens their individuality, consumes their lives, and is utterly necessary for them to survive. It’s the ultimate love-hate relationship. So when lay-offs come calling, it brings out the best and, more often, the worst in the employees. They are often well-intentioned but mostly petty; they bicker, they tease, they steal, and they casually defame, they gossip, they trick, and they maneuver. But they also support, worry, joke, laugh, love, and try to reform. These are people who are just trying to make it through the daily grind with their dignity intact – and to them the ultimate indignity would be to be escorted out by security with all of their meager possessions in a box while their former co-workers try not to get the stain of association on them.

Ferris captures the complex, wide-ranging spectrum of emotions and attitudes that fester in the workplace. Jealousy, friendship, annoyance, and love – all existing hand in hand and ever-present, even when it seems like they would contradict each other. When a co-worker succeeds, our unnamed narrator remarks that “we were proud, astounded, envious, incredulous, vaguely indifferent, ready to seize on the first hint of mediocrity, and genuinely pleased for him.” That, my friends, is life, Ferris understands it, and he captures it brilliantly.

As an added bonus, “Then We Came to the End” is also wickedly funny. There are inspired hijinks related to rampant chair-swapping and a vindictive office coordinator, a client asks the firm to capture the funny side of cancer in an ad, and our employees – ever advertisers – re-touch the photo of a young girl in a missing poster because they think people will be more likely to respond if she doesn’t look so pale and her smile isn’t so crooked. But there is a deadly serious streak as well. One character is grieving her murdered child, another one deals with illness (and not so well at that), several people are downsized, one employee considers abortion while another struggles with depression, and a burst of violence shocks everyone near the end. But Ferris, a deft writer in only his first outing as a novelist, seamlessly blends the dramatic and the funny without ever losing his wickedly satirical tone.

Characters may come across as callous, which may turn some readers off, while others may wonder what the point of this little exercise is (clearly, they’ve missed it completely), but I for one thoroughly enjoyed this book and have been feverishly recommending it since I finished it yesterday. And I can’t wait to see what the promising Ferris comes up with next.

Grade: A-...less

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Andy rated it:

10/29/07

Read in October, 2007

I came upon this book on one of the book blogs I read after it was short-listed for the National Book Award. The reviews compared Joshua Ferris' debut novel in tone & content to "The Office," the best 30-minute network sitcom since Seinfeld and a current obsession of mine. So, Then We Came to the End sounded like it had good possibilities. And when I came to the end of it, I found myself having enjoyed it, despite some obvious flaws.

I have to start by commenting on the ...more I came upon this book on one of the book blogs I read after it was short-listed for the National Book Award. The reviews compared Joshua Ferris' debut novel in tone & content to "The Office," the best 30-minute network sitcom since Seinfeld and a current obsession of mine. So, Then We Came to the End sounded like it had good possibilities. And when I came to the end of it, I found myself having enjoyed it, despite some obvious flaws.

I have to start by commenting on the first-person plural narration because it is something that is unique and identifiable about this book, and it's cleverly also embedded in the title of the story. I thought it was effective for the most part, especially in our initial tour of the office when we're trying to get to know all of the characters (and there are a LOT). What Ferris gets out of the "we" that a writer of lesser talents might neglect is real emotional content: "We were still alive,... The sun still shone in as we sat at our desks. Certain days it was enough just to look out at the clouds and at the tops of the buildings. We were buoyed by it, momentarily. It made us 'happy.' We could even turn uncommonly kind." Those kind of sentiments, even when they are surrounded by playfulness and absurdity and awful cynicism, they still worked for me.

Ferris also shows great ability to craft characters. This is a novel largely built around the idea that corporate America at the dawn of the 21st century is hollow and absurd and that we want nothing more out of life than security and stasis. To that end, there are plenty of characters here who fit into that faceless corporation mold, and who only pop up to show how sad & unfeeling our society has become (the office coordinator, for example). But there is a heart to these people, and that is evident in characters like the deranged Tom Mota, the clueless Jim Jackers, the totem-pole worshipping Benny Shasburger and the always professional Joe Pope. I think the danger that Ferris faced in writing this novel was relying too much on stereotypes in the workplace, because there are weird people in every office, but there are enough REAL human people here to latch onto to carry you through the story.

On the down side, the novel definitely loses its momentum in the second half. There are essentially two halves of the corporate tale, interupted by a 30-page interlude where we lose the first-person plural voice and we find an unexpected meditation on mortality and loneliness. That interlude was where the novel first surprised me, and I was excited that we might be headed somewhere far deeper and darker than I had expected. But the promise of that interlude was not realized in the second half. We return to the every-day and there comes a real heavy plot device that brings the story to a close, and there is an even more contrived device to bring all these characters together in a reunion. There is also a significant nod given to the events of 9/11, and how those events may have triggered a change in corporate culture, but it is only a nod, and it is not commented upon at all during the reunion post-script.

All in all, it was worth the read. It was entertaining and well-written, and it had a heart to it, but it didn't have the guts to weigh in on every question it raised, or take the reader to a place of greater understanding or sympathy for these people, and in that, I thought there was an opportunity missed. ...less

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Andrea rated it:

02/24/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: Any one who fears they may be alone in their work-related exisential angst.

I think it's telling that so many of our best and most popular artistic endeavors from the past ten years have come from people trying to make sense of the modern day work place. It is also telling that most of these efforts, movies like "Office Space" and T.V. shows like "The Office" for example, include some element of satire or dark humor. I'm still working on my theory as to why that is. It may have something to do with the "quiet desperation" many of us cube dw...more I think it's telling that so many of our best and most popular artistic endeavors from the past ten years have come from people trying to make sense of the modern day work place. It is also telling that most of these efforts, movies like "Office Space" and T.V. shows like "The Office" for example, include some element of satire or dark humor. I'm still working on my theory as to why that is. It may have something to do with the "quiet desperation" many of us cube dwellers feel, and our need to find something to laugh it about, even when most of thing we encounter--indignities minor and major--aren't particularly funny.

"Then We Came to the End" follows the rules of his new "workplace epic" genre, and it, like the other examples, mixes it's satire with sincerity making the characters in the book utterly sympathetic and at the same, time utterly despisable.

One of the main "characters" in fact, isn't any one particular person, but the group of workers. It's the we, the employees, telling you the stories of it's co-workers. (We thought this, We did this, etc.) This perspective gives you the read both that feeling of happy belonging when "you're one the gang" or "part of the family" and the feeling of despair when you so desperately wish you weren't. Any office dweller would be familiar with these feelings, and the author replicates them so beautifully with his narrator.

The thing that most struck me about this book was how often I found myself catching my breath when I came across a passage and reaching for a post-it note to mark it with a "so true!" so I could come back to it later. He manages so often to put his finger on the kinds of frustration and bewilderment we feel about our work that is so hard to express. Even more so, he manages to express the frustration and bewilderment of living in our society and this particular time in history. Here's an example of one of my favorite passages:

Carl was mesmerized. It was the sort of thing, six months ago, that would have sent him right over the edge, seeing these men, these first-generation Americans without much choice in the matter, spend their morning in the dark recess of a loading dock power-spraying the asphalt and the Dumpster--good god, was work so meaningless? Was life so meaningless? It reminded him of when an ad got watered down by a client, and watered down, until everything interesting about the ad disappeared. Carl still had to write the copy for it. The art director still had to put the drop shadow where the drop shadow belonged and the logo in its proper place. That was the process know as, polishing the turd. Those two poor saps hosing down the alleyway there were just doing the same thing. All over America, in fact, people were up and out of their beds today in a continuing effort to polish turds. Sure, for the sake of survival, but more immediately, for the sake of some sadistic manager or shit-brained client whose small imagination and numbingly dumb ideas were bleaching the world of all relevancy and hope.

I should note the whole book is not as bleak as this. In fact, it, unlike many of our offices today, is full of relevancy and hope.

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Mark rated it:

06/21/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in June, 2008

The first thing to say about this book is that no matter what else I think about the plot, the themes, the point of view, or any other aspect of this novel, it was compulsively readable, which in itself is a mark of how fine a talent Joshua Ferris is.

In some ways, he is plowing the same ground as Douglas Coupland and Dilbert, but without the manic surrealism of the one or the cartoonish brevity of the other. Virtually the entire plot of "Then We Came to the End" takes place in a ...more
The first thing to say about this book is that no matter what else I think about the plot, the themes, the point of view, or any other aspect of this novel, it was compulsively readable, which in itself is a mark of how fine a talent Joshua Ferris is.

In some ways, he is plowing the same ground as Douglas Coupland and Dilbert, but without the manic surrealism of the one or the cartoonish brevity of the other. Virtually the entire plot of "Then We Came to the End" takes place in a few floors of a high-rise Chicago office building, home to an advertising and marketing agency. The characters are the copywriters and artists who occupy the cubicles and their bosses, and the obsession of the book is the relationships they have with each other and with their work.

The entire arc of the novel is set against a decline in their business and the drumbeat of layoffs, so that as the book moves along, one after another of the crew exits the building, usually clutching one pathetic box of "useless shit", as the unnamed narrator puts it.

At first, I feared the entire book would be about the personal relationships and habits and put-downs and shifting allegiances of the workers, without any actual discussion of what they did for a living, but in fact some of their advertising work does find its way into the story.

In particular, a shifting set of pro bono campaigns for breast cancer becomes one of their momentary obsessions, and they seem to trace directly back to the much feared and admired boss, who herself has received the diagnosis, but who is more than a little ambivalent about going through with her treatment for it.

The central kernel of the novel concerns her personal journey through the diagnosis and her relationship with a lawyer who she hopes will see her through it, and that one short story within a story almost felt to me as though it was the original writing that Ferris did, and that he then decided to build the rest of his book around it. It has a vulnerability and power that the rest of the book lacks, despite its entertaining tales of everything from the copywriter who was bequeathed an Indian totem pole to the manic employee who may or may not be planning to pull a Columbine on the office after he's laid off.

"When We Came to the End" wants to be a philosophical reflection on the meaninglessness of consumer culture and the art of promoting it, on the ways in which work we don't enjoy or respect consumes our lives anyway, of the myriad ways that the social network of an office triumphs over its actual mission. It isn't quite profound enough for all that, I fear, but the strong storytelling, the vivid characters, and the saving grace of that one cancer story give it enough power to make it a winner....less

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Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 031601639X)

06/12/08

"Then We Came to the End" follows a group of employees at a Chicago ad agency as they are whittled away by layoffs. The novel begins with a short prologue set in the halcyon days of the late 90's, when everyone could make a quick buck off the internet, the Towers still loomed over lower Manhattan, and no one had ever heard of a threat level. As Joshua Ferris describes it:

"It was an era of take-ones and tchotchkes. The world was flush with internet cash and we got our fair share ...more "Then We Came to the End" follows a group of employees at a Chicago ad agency as they are whittled away by layoffs. The novel begins with a short prologue set in the halcyon days of the late 90's, when everyone could make a quick buck off the internet, the Towers still loomed over lower Manhattan, and no one had ever heard of a threat level. As Joshua Ferris describes it:

"It was an era of take-ones and tchotchkes. The world was flush with internet cash and we got our fair share of it. It was our position that logo design was every bit as important as product performance and distribution systems. 'Wicked cool' were the words we used to describe our logo designs. 'Bush league' were the words we used we used to describe the logo designs of other agencies - unless it was a really well-designed logo, in which case we bowed down before it, much like the ancient Mayans did their pagan gods. We, too, thought it would never end."

It does end, of course, and that is where the novel really begins, as the ad agency faces dwindling revenues and cutbacks. As the above-excerpt indicates, the story is told by an omniscient narrator using the pronoun "we" rather than the customary "I." It is an oddly effective technique, placing you in the office's best cubicle to observe the goings-on.

This is a character-driven book. You meet: the guy who sends the long crazy emails quoting Emerson; the guy who copies books on the copy machine to read at his desk, so people think he's working; the brown-nosing middle manager striving to get ahead; the guy who cares too much about his office chair; the cold, distant boss; the office gossip. Every person you've ever met in an office environment is represented, yet the beauty of the novel is how these people become flesh and blood. There is no plot, per se; rather the novel garrulously flows from event to event, sometimes flashing back, gradually revealing different shades and further dimensions, subverting the initial archetypes.

The novel perfectly captures the banalities, annoyances, and minor triumphs that comprise life. It is bitingly funny, at times painfully so. One of the great set pieces is the story of Tom Mota's chair, revolving around a particularly-desired piece of furniture.

The great surprise, though, is the emotional wallop it delivers by the end. You really become invested in the characters and their destinies. For instance, you meet a woman whose child was abducted and killed. She later divorces her husband and spends her lunch hours at McDonald's, watching the children play in the indoor playground. The way Ferris is able to seamlessly transition between laugh-out-loud absurdity and misty-eyed sadness is amazing. He manages archness without cruelty; tragedy without being maudlin. An epilogue set in the future, which looks back at what became of the characters, almost brought tears to my eyes.

It's hard to say more without ruining the surprises. Suffice it to say, it's one of the best books I've read in a long time. ...less

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Shelly rated it:

08/08/08

Read in July, 2008

I really, really, really enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't a life changing experience, it didn't inspire me to be a better person, or to follow my dreams. It was just a fun read. I'll turn 37 in a few days and for the first time in my life I'm working in an office building, in a cube. Before I got this job, I thought The Office and Office Space were funny, but now I really get them. It's the same with this book. I don't think you have to work in an office to get it, but...more I really, really, really enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't a life changing experience, it didn't inspire me to be a better person, or to follow my dreams. It was just a fun read. I'll turn 37 in a few days and for the first time in my life I'm working in an office building, in a cube. Before I got this job, I thought The Office and Office Space were funny, but now I really get them. It's the same with this book. I don't think you have to work in an office to get it, but it's sort of like having Cancer--unless you've had it, you only know about it on a superficial level.
The novel takes place in an ad agency in Chicago. At first I thought, Oh, I'm not going to be able to relate to these characters. I HATE admen/women. I HATE the advertising industry. What kind of person spends their days thinking up ways to dupe me into buying shit I don't need? Bunch of Jerks. But then at one point Ferris's narrator describes himself (and his co-workers) as "hired guns of the soul." (or somethingtothateffect), and I was like "So they know?" Of course they know. And that's what's so fucking tragic about this story. Most of us have to set our alarms Monday-Friday so that we can get our asses out of bed, leave dream-time and comfort behind, and head off to our cubes. Most of us have un-fulfilling, soul-destroying, creativity-robbing "careers". We spend the day under and in front of artificial lights, surrounded by muted grays and taupes, at first anxiously awaiting lunch, and then anxiously awaiting five o' clock. But the sad and hard truth of the matter is, as the book poignantly affirms, we need these jobs. As much as we may not want our jobs, we really don't want to lose them. So we make the best of it. We gossip with and about co-workers. We come up with new ways to waste time. We compare our jobs and our lives to others that suck worse. Commiseration: It makes the world go round.

Before I go I feel compelled to mention that as much as I liked the book, I felt the end dragged on a bit. So go ahead and skim the last couple of chapters, you'll get the gist.

Also, if you happen to be reading this and you happen to be one of those rare folks whose job is financially, intellectually, and spiritually rewarding--I don't want to hear about it; please keep it to yourself. ...less

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Edan rated it:

(review of isbn 031601639X)

04/27/08

I was tempted to write this review in the plural first person so that you all would be impressed with how clever I am, but, fuck it, I have a novel to write and papers to grade! (Plus, what if you thought I was speaking in the royal 'we' or the blogger 'we' and the whole experiment just failed?!)

Ferris displays some technical savvy in this book. The point of view tired me out on my first attempt, but a month or so later I returned to the novel with an open mind (and heart, I suppose), able...more I was tempted to write this review in the plural first person so that you all would be impressed with how clever I am, but, fuck it, I have a novel to write and papers to grade! (Plus, what if you thought I was speaking in the royal 'we' or the blogger 'we' and the whole experiment just failed?!)

Ferris displays some technical savvy in this book. The point of view tired me out on my first attempt, but a month or so later I returned to the novel with an open mind (and heart, I suppose), able to fall into the 'we' without a problem at all. The way in which the book brings individual characters into focus is pretty terrific, actually. I am forever attached to Tom Mota, for example, after what he did for Janice--and I'm impressed that Ferris was able to connect me in such a way, given the somewhat alienating distance of the "we" voice. Throughout I felt a sort of hatred for the 'we', perhaps because I've never worked in an office, and probably because if I did, I'd be the Joe Pope or even the Lynn Mason: working, working, while some dipshits goofed off in the next office. I am a nerd, and a harsh task master.

My reading experience with this novel was really conflicted. I always wanted to read it, but once I was reading it, I felt annoyed, bored, frustrated--except for brief moments of comedy and sadness that really hit me. But, after being bored/annoyed/frustrated, I'd come back to the book a couple hours later, dying, again, to read it. How is this possible? Maybe Ferris and I need to go to couple's therapy.

I was actually genuinely interested in the advertising the firm was doing, and yet, the narrative would veer away from the actual work (which wasn't paying, but whatever), to discuss a character's gossip for pages upon pages. I understand that this is the point of the book, but it just didn't mesmerize me (except for the 'buckshelves' section, which I still laugh at). The third-person section about Lynn Mason fell flat for me. It wasn't moving in the way it should have been, or could have been.

I did, however, love the last thirty pages, especially the last line, which shifted the point of view from a technical and thematic acrobatic to something poignant and intimate.

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Mr.Nourok rated it:

03/21/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Everyone with a sense of humor :)

Then We Came to the End
Little, Brown, and Company, 2007, $23.99
Joshua Ferris ISBN 9780141027630

There are particular books where the author does something unusual in the writing of them, in their form, for instance. Some, for example, put the author right into the book, so that he or she is not only the writer but also a character. Operation Shylock, by Philip Roth, is such a novel. Some novels play around with time, as in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, in whic...more Then We Came to the End
Little, Brown, and Company, 2007, $23.99
Joshua Ferris ISBN 9780141027630

There are particular books where the author does something unusual in the writing of them, in their form, for instance. Some, for example, put the author right into the book, so that he or she is not only the writer but also a character. Operation Shylock, by Philip Roth, is such a novel. Some novels play around with time, as in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, in which a Nazi war criminal, who escaped justice, finds that life goes backwards in time for him, as though his life is in reverse. Some novels, like Bright Lights, Big City, are narrated in the second person (“You ask yourself if it’s okay to leave the room…”). I had never read the kind of point of view like the one in the phenomenal novel, Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris.
This novel narrated in the second person. “WE WERE FRACTIOUS AND overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us liked most everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled. We loved free bagels in the morning.”
The clever thing about this point of view is that we never learn who the person narrating as “we” is.
The novel’s about a group of people who work in an advertising office. Almost everything that happens in the novel takes place in this office. It’s a funny but subtle book. We learn about all of these people, the kind of cool people, who hang out together, share gossip, and try to amuse themselves at others’ expense. But here’s sadness as well.
Jannine’s daughter is kidnapped and killed. This is where the author makes an interesting point about our society. The office makes a billboard for the girl when she’s first missing and it goes up near the girls home, off a highway. The mother sees it everyday on her ride home from work. But even when the little girl is found,, the billboard stays up, and the office can’t get the billboard people to take it down, so this poor woman is reminded every day of her daughter’s horrific death. The office is not happy about this. Nor about a lot of things, especially the amount of firings that have begun to happen.
Then We Came to the End entertains, but it also teaches us something about ourselves, about the way we live our lives. Are we people who cower in front of the boss, or are we people who take a stand against the establishment, fighting for our rights and justice for our coworkers?
Then We Came to the End is a funny, moving novel that will make you laugh, cry–and be happy you have a job. We, you, I will love it.

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Tara rated it:

03/09/08

Read in March, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I've been bed-ridden with some mysterious illness for days and, because I "accidentally" lost my copy of Botany of Desire and also because I hate t.v., I borrowed my boyfriend's copy of Then We Came to the End. I more ate it than read it, finishing it in less than 48 hours. I will freely admit that when you make this choice, you open yourself to the possibility of missing choice prose, and just reading for plot points in your bleary-eyed state. This might be possible if you were rea...more I've been bed-ridden with some mysterious illness for days and, because I "accidentally" lost my copy of Botany of Desire and also because I hate t.v., I borrowed my boyfriend's copy of Then We Came to the End. I more ate it than read it, finishing it in less than 48 hours. I will freely admit that when you make this choice, you open yourself to the possibility of missing choice prose, and just reading for plot points in your bleary-eyed state. This might be possible if you were reading Lolita, but in this case, I don't feel too much remorse. ANYWAY, having acknolwedged my bent perspective, I give it a C. The prose and diction are about as sophisticated as J.K. Rowling's. The characters are friendly, familiar stereotypes with mostly predictable physical traits and vices. Occasionally, Joshua Ferris touches on an affecting, inscrutable moment, like Benny's fascination with the totem pole, but it almost seems like he struck gold accidentally. The moments of planned poignancy, like the breast cancer centerpiece, bother me less for their manipulativeness (we all WANT to be emotionally manipulated by a book, don't we?) and more for their clumsiness. The development of a character into full fruit requires more than just giving her both strength and weakness, more than just showing her drinking a bottle of wine and lusting after a commitment-phobic lawyer. I mean, come on. I hope that people are more complex and meaningful than that. What this book lacks most is detail; the attention of the author to detail can convert a stereotype into an uncomfortable reality, through force of our ability to absorb and imagine the circumstance, with their peculiar textures and hues. Moving to a different medium, I just saw 3 Kings, which employs stereotypical characters of the armed forces variety, but because of the emotional availability of Mark Wahlberg and the strange and singular humor of David O. Russell, goes beyond that. When the American soldiers are storming a building, and an Iraqi soldier runs by with an armful of blue jeans, or when Mark Wahlberg suggests the substitute of one more acceptable racial epithet for another, you feel like you are launched into a (skewed) form of reality. I don't think this book ever surpasses the level of the Harry Potter books, which is totally consumable because of its loveable characters and relateable themes, but without poetry, detail, or a unique perspective, remains more pulp fiction than literature....less

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Penny rated it:

08/17/08

Read in August, 2008

I read Then We Came to the End right after finishing The Ruins, which was appropriate as they are, in some ways, similar books. OK, The Ruins is a creepy thriller about a horror in the jungle, and Then We Came is a social comedy taking place in a Chicago ad agency. But in both, disaster stalks a small group of people and the reader sees how the strain tells upon them, fragments the group and helps lead people towards their doom. In The Ruins, the fate awaiting the characters is hideous death. In...more I read Then We Came to the End right after finishing The Ruins, which was appropriate as they are, in some ways, similar books. OK, The Ruins is a creepy thriller about a horror in the jungle, and Then We Came is a social comedy taking place in a Chicago ad agency. But in both, disaster stalks a small group of people and the reader sees how the strain tells upon them, fragments the group and helps lead people towards their doom. In The Ruins, the fate awaiting the characters is hideous death. In Then We Came -- layoffs.

Its the early days of this decade and the economy has taken a downturn. The employees of the ad agency, who spend most of their days gossiping and playing pranks, are suddenly in danger of "walking Spanish down the hall" -- a phrase someone picked up from a Tom Waits song, which basically is what happens when the boss tells you you're fired and you have to get your stuff and leave immediately. The reader is pulled into this world as the novel is written in the first person plural -- "we." Ferris pulls this off very well. Anyone who has worked in an office knows that odd belongingness with a group of people you may or may not have chosen to spend your time with otherwise (in many cases, not). Ferris has fun with the tension between the surface uniformity and underlying contradictions of any collective, e.g., "Practically everyone shared their thoughts with Benny because everyone loved Benny, which was why some of us hated his guts."

To start with, many of the characters in the book are just names and stereotypes and you don't particularly like any of them. This is probably deliberate -- Ferris writes about the weeks when you get a new job and how overwhelming and indistinguishable your new colleagues can seem. As the chapters pass, you learn more about them all and they seem more real. And then, right in the middle of the novel, Ferris pulls off a bravura move -- a long chapter, in third-person omniscient, about a hellish experience of one of the characters, that pulls you in and makes you care. It changes the whole tenor of the book. He then returns to "we," but now you see how close many of these characters are to issues of life and death (while still spending lots of time worrying about who has which office chair).

Overall, a great novel -- a clever high wire act, an amusing workplace comedy and a trenchant examination of people's hopes, dreams and despairs and the ways people can be there for, and disappoint, each other. I'll likely go down to four stars later but in my first enthusiasm I'm giving it a 5. -- a few hours later. Nah, its a 4, not a 5. I've already moved it down. But I do highly recommend. ...less

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Karen rated it:

04/06/08

Read in March, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

We will be reading this for April's bookclub meeting. Thank! God! is all I have to say. Why does What Is the What keep coming up on our lists and what fixations do these young things have with genocide?

It's waiting for me at the library. Big-time fun waits for me tomorrow when I go get it. Whoo. hoo.

March 30: UPDATE

OK, I read the book. It was about some horrible people and I liked it well enough (too insecure about myself to actually wonder which of those characters was me at ...more We will be reading this for April's bookclub meeting. Thank! God! is all I have to say. Why does What Is the What keep coming up on our lists and what fixations do these young things have with genocide?

It's waiting for me at the library. Big-time fun waits for me tomorrow when I go get it. Whoo. hoo.

March 30: UPDATE

OK, I read the book. It was about some horrible people and I liked it well enough (too insecure about myself to actually wonder which of those characters was me at work for fear of learning the answer), but it was OK. And then I hit the Lynn chapter, and it was wonderful. And then I read the after Lynn stuff, where they don't know what to do while she's in denial, and it was wonderful. And then the Tom Mota stuff was a little silly, although I could see how it fit with the rest of the book and maybe even with the character, who was a favorite character. I thought Tom was well-drawn, as was Marcia and Joe Piper, at least to the point that I understood things about their personalities outside of work despite the fact that the book didn't go outside of work.

And then I hit the end of Part Two and got to the epilogue, which was derivative at best. Quitting cube culture to go work outside is straight out of Office Space; Ben and Marcia's romance is straight out of The Office. I didn't like everyone going to a book reading and hearing lines from the middle of the book. I didn't like that Janine turned to Harleys. I didn't like Tom Mota being killed by friendly fire, and not because I liked him or that I'm pro-war or any politic or personal reason. It just seemed like a sort of extraneous thing to bring up. Just leave him in the army. Why get political, even in a small way? It's distracting. The epilogue/part 3 was as amusing and entertaining as the rest of it, but I didn't understand its purpose. I think the last few pages could maybe have been retained--the reunion stuff was pretty good--but all that build-up, with the Godfather lines... eh.

I have thought a lot about the voice of the novel. I always like to think of the first-person narrator as a character who reveals things without meaning to, and who filters the events of a novel for whatever reason. This first-person novel really created a transparent narrator. I guess that's an accomplishment. Try as I might, I cannot put any personality to the narrator. I suppose it's appropriate to have a completely shallow storyteller deliver a tale about the shallowness of work relationships.

After reading this book, I want to reconnect with old coworkers even less. Why oh why did I spend all that time creating my profile on LinkedIn?...less

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James rated it:

04/13/08

Read in April, 2008

The much-acclaimed Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris is a story about stories. Which should be enough to keep English Professors masturbating to its meta/post-modern/post-colonial pages for quite some time to come.

But it’s also set in the contemporary workplace of an advertising agency. So with all of its witty talk of coveting office furniture, stealing office supplies, gossip, layoffs, pranks, and meetings, it’s a story most of us can all identify with, and, most importantly, l...more

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