Scott's review of Then We Came to the End
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
It's unusual for a novel to be narrated in the first-person plural, but the "we" who tell the story of Joshua Ferris' comic office farce feel completely natural because they're real. The modern American office of any size always has a "we", and if you work there, as I do, you are a part of them, on some of the better days, or apart from them, on the others. The cube-farm in Then We Came To The End is an advertising agency, but it could represent any collective group endeavor which straddles the thin and messy line between creativity and cutthroat commerce. I've known co-workers like the book's Karen Woo, who invents a substance called "lastive acid" for an ad; like Lynn Mason, the well-known yet unknowable middle manager who may or may not have breast cancer; and like Tom Mota, a volatile divorcee who exercises many of the violent urges against his corporate masters about which just as many of us frequently fantasize. Ferris' story isn't so much the ol...more
comments
No comments have been added yet.
