The Unnamed

by Joshua Ferris

What drives a man to stay in a marriage, in a job? What forces him away? Is love or conscience enough to overcome the darker, stronger urges of the natural world? The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human understanding.

During their 20-year marriage, Tim and Jane Farnsworth have savored the fruits of his labor as a high-powered lawyer: they live in a beautiful home, they travel on exotic vacations, they don’t worry about money. Tim has battled a bizarre, inexplicable illness, but those episodes, while not exactly forgotten, have passed. Then it comes back, causing him to behave in a frighteningly new way, driving him out of his life and into a world and a self that he can’t recognize and Jane is helpless to control. How far will he go to fight his body’s incomprehensible desires, and what will they both risk to find the way back to the people they love?

A heartbreaking story of family and marriage, a meditation on the unseen forces of nature and desire, The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human connection.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Book Club, Adult

310 pages, Hardcover

First published January 18, 2010

About the author

Joshua Ferris is the author of novels Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour as well as a story collection, The Dinner Party. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He was named one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers in 2010. He lives in Hudson, New York with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Taufiq Yves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever glanced at an electric pole and noticed a missing person poster? Typically, these posters are looking for 3 types of people: elderly individuals with dementia who have gone missing, young, innocent children who have been lost, and rebellious teenagers who have run away from home.

The black-and-white photo on that thin sheet of paper often depicts a good-looking elderly person, a lively and adorable child, or a fair-skinned teenager. Regardless of when, where, why, or how, when they become separated from their families, it's always a haunting nightmare for both the individual and their family. If they are still alive, they are destined to become outcasts, looked down upon by others.

Wandering, in my eyes, is a trendy term. If it's intentional, it can be romantic, like wandering to the ends of the earth with a loved one, with your love remaining constant. But wandering is often passive, caused by war, making one homeless; by livelihood, forcing one to leave their hometown; or by illness, driving one to a distant land. Perhaps, wandering can also be somewhere between active and passive. Joshua Ferris's novel, The Unnamed, tells the story of a man forced to wander.

Tim, a middle-aged, wealthy law firm partner, deeply loves his wife, Jane, and has a musically talented daughter. The family of 3 is the epitome of the American middle-class ideal. Tim's wandering seems at odds with his affluent and harmonious family life, which is precisely what Ferris intended when choosing this subject matter. He suffers from a condition called "benign essential wandering," characterized by the uncontrollable urge to wander, regardless of direction or distance, until he collapses, exhausted, somewhere, in the rain, wind, or snow, without knowing where he is.

Tim's illness has a disastrous impact on his family and career. Jane has to face it alone, even resorting to alcoholism to relieve the stress. As Tim has more and more episodes, and Jane searches for him again and again, both are pushed to the brink of collapse. It's not just the weight of life that's crumbling, but also the promise of a happy marriage.

There's a Chinese saying, "A couple is like birds in the same forest, but when disaster strikes, they fly separately," which describes the fragility of marriage as a social unit. Ultimately, Tim and Jane, without consulting each other, choose to separate for love. Tim wanders freely, while Jane waits. But if Jane loves him, she should let him be free, at least let his heart be free. Tim's feet continue to walk, and he even learns to enjoy life and cherish the present along the way. He always holds onto one belief: no matter how long or how far he wanders, the direction of his wandering is always to return home for love, to be with Jenny and his daughter.

Ferris, a writer born in the 1970s, excels at selecting urban themes, especially in his in-depth portrayal of the lives and careers of white-collar workers. This book is his second novel, and it won the Best Book of the Month award upon its release. His debut novel, Then We Came to the End is also well-known among readers. If Then We Came to the End is a black comedy about office life, then The Unnamed can be considered a warm work that conveys the warmth of love behind sadness. Ferris not only delves deeply into the confusion faced by middle-aged marriages but also uses the rules of the corporate game as a subplot. As Tim suffers the impact of his illness on his career, the cold reality of human relationships is also presented, which is quite thought-provoking.

Life is a grand banquet of love and pain, and it's ultimately fleeting. Tim and Jane are fortunate to have shared this banquet in this life, loving and hurting. When the music ends, they still haven't parted. Love keeps them together.

3.6 / 5 stars

[Oriana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gah, I hated this stupid book. I knew I hated it after the first twenty pages, and I only finished it out of spite.

I am a big enough person to admit that I was expecting to hate this, as I always hate anything that's too hyped, too anticipated, too next big thing, so obvs I may not have given it an honest chance, but whatever. It still was a weird, uneven, mostly bad book.

On the good side: Gone was the gimmickry of Then We Came to the End. Nicely done, Joshua; though your first book was widely loved due to its gimmicky originality, you didn't replace one gimmick with another going into your sophomore (isn't it true that, etymologically speaking, "sophomore" means "stupid," or something like that?) effort. And the book is – I guess – fairly original, in both concept and structure. But that brings us to...

...the bad side. Far be it from me to cling to convention for convention's sake; heaven knows I love a good dose of experimental lit. But some conventions I think are fairly important, and this book flouts them at its own expense.

For one thing, if you're going to write a character-driven book, it's a nice idea to give your characters some dimension. And by "dimension," I don't mean "a few quirks that can be repeated over and over." The character of Becka in particular was woefully underdeveloped.

For another thing, usually a novel is kind of told in the same style throughout, or if not the same style, it usually has the same sort of balance of narration, dialogue, scenery, etc., throughout. This one is incredibly uneven, which I can't really say much more about without giving away the plot. It just skips from domestic drama to courtroom intrigue to bildungsroman(ish) to nature observation to God musing, with no warning and little justification.

Also the descriptions themselves are really hit or miss, with sporadic nice passages getting shat all over by really clunky metaphors and purple-ish prose and not-believable dialogue.

Here's another thing: I don't know if Joshua Ferris has ever spent time with any women. Because I do not believe his women.

Oh, and one more: You know that thing someone famous said about how if there's a gun in the beginning of the story, it better get fired by the end? Yeah, see, that's considered a truism, Joshua, one to be followed. There's several strongly emphasized atmospheric-type things in this book (weather, nature, stuff like that; again, not trying to give anything away) which are never realized at all, thus cheapening the entire thing. I mean, did he just forget that he wrote a bunch of shit about dead bees?? Did his editors? One throwaway conversation with a maybe-hallucinated priest is not enough, Joshua.

Lastly, there is a lot of quasi-spirituality sprinkled throughout, lots of talk of souls and God and things like that, which are also never fully realized. Clearly he doesn't want to make any claims about what is right or true, but it just makes him seem like a flake who is trying to elevate the quality of his mediocre musings by strapping them with "spiritual" essence. Yuck.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ferris interesting suspense drama: A husband and lawyer Tim, has an undiagnosed condition, whenever, wherever and however Tim is, he stops doing what he is doing and walks, walks and walks until he can't walk anymore. The Unnamed looks into the later part of Tim's life as he struggles to keep a hold on his family, career and a big murder case when his walking condition starts up again. Interesting read with such a fascinating premise. A Three Star, 6 out of 12 read for me.

2012 read

[Krok Zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Upgrading from 3 to 4 stars because for some reason I keep thinking about this book even though I read it like a year ago, and because I fucking love the audacity of the opening sentence.]

What an odd book.

The first section really is magnificent, instantly hooking you with descriptions of the bizarre illness alluded to in the title as well as vivid sketches of the sufferer's life at home and at work. (Some early office-set scenes actually do offer an interesting echo with Ferris' Then We Came to the End, containing the book's sole nods toward humor, although Ferris loses interest in the work thread pretty quickly--a symptom of his surprising lack of focus in this novel.) All the pieces are in place for Ferris to pull off a wrenching tragedy. As is my wont, I was imagining the cinematic possibilities: a man wakes up in an unfamiliar place, alone and disoriented; he shakes the sleep from his body and waits for his mind to follow suit, takes out his phone, and then we cut to the car ride home with his wife, all tense silences and lens flares. Later, an unbroken shot of the man walking, walking, over bridges and along sides of highways, walking and then stopping and then cut; back to the wake-call-ride ritual. The blinking editing rhythms plunging us into his vicious cycle of involuntary escape and shameful return. If nothing else, this first section could make a fine piece of elliptical filmmaking. And of course it works on its own as a study of a family under catastrophic duress, the wife and daughter just as compelling as the man.

And then, shit gets weird. In what I can only assume is a show of solidarity with his perambulatory protagonist, Ferris ditches the sharp sense of purpose he had in the first section and starts wandering aimlessly in the narrative hinterlands. Wife and daughter recede into the background; plot elements introduced earlier fail to pay off even cursorily; different thematic/philosophical hats are tried on, none purchased. Voice and tone become crushingly inconsistent. It's established that the characters don't know what causes the man's condition, but does Ferris know? Did he have any sort of endgame or overarching design in mind? It feels like he was just winging it. But line-by-line the book remains fascinating, and although the shift in conflict from external to internal cuts off too much of the reader's air supply, it's an understandable choice and a gutsy one. One thing Ferris doesn't lack is balls.

The Unnamed is a long way from the fully realized masterpiece that was Then We Came to the End, but I still recommend it, and I think it confirms that Ferris is a writer of consequence and substance who could develop into one of our more interesting prestige novelists. Contrary to the Goodreaders disappointed over Ferris' departure from comedy, I applaud him for trying something different, even if it didn't totally work. Again: balls.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed is a purposeless, relentlessly depressing book. I get the sense Ferris was chugging balls-out on the downer path because he didn’t want to minimize the darkness, but I think he lost his way when he chose to focus nearly exclusively on the worst moments of strained marriages and mental illness. Listen. I’ve gone through dark stretches in my existence, I imagine most of us have, but not every second of the day is painful and dour. The lack of any light in the characters’ lives at all, at least until a well-written but somewhat awkwardly tacked on excuse for a happy ending, removes credibility from the storyline.

Er, I suppose I should start at the beginning. The Unnamed referenced in the book’s title is the main character’s irresistible impulse to get up, out of nowhere, leave his wife, daughter, and high-powered lawyer gig to walk, almost in a trance, until he collapses and wakes a few hours later. Even this was horseshit, though, if you ask me, because the narrative often seemed to land the character in bad neighborhoods amongst dangerous people for the sake of plot tension. How come the guy never woke up behind an affluent suburban Starbucks? Ferris uses the obscure nature of the disorder to mask some huge narrative leaps that felt lazy to me. He nails the perspective of those outside the mental illness, particularly the main character’s wife’s, and he’s good with details on the long walks. But this book, like the character’s walking, meanders without reaching a destination. I think the walking is supposed to be some big metaphor for isolation or compulsion or whatever but even if that’s the case Ferris’s execution is half-assed at best. For example, Ferris makes passing reference to the fact the walker has money in the bank and can access resources at atms across the country. So his wife, who is searching for him everywhere, never thinks to cut him off or track him through his withdrawls and purchases? And he only ends up interacting negatively with the police a few times? C’mon, man. Booklist’s review, cited on the inner jacket, calls the book a “devastating metaphoric take on the yearning for connection and the struggles of commitment.” What? Maybe if a high school sophomore wrote it I could forgive the holes and monotone nature, but, nah, not at this level.

You know how comedic actors sometimes attempt to transition from comedy to serious drama but the effort seems forced? I felt that way reading The Unnamed. This novel seems a reaction to the author’s lighter and better Then We Came To The End. Maybe he needed to exorcise this book’s demons before moving on to the next novel. Maybe he has a personal history with mental illness and the subject matter is important to him. That doesn’t mean I got much from reading The Unnamed. The book feels like a grim and un-nuanced drag without much of a point. Ferris’s sophomore novel is, well, sophomoric. Bleh.

[K.M. Soehnlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this more than five stars, I would. I don't think I've been this affected by a novel in years. Above all, it is a novel of great compassion.

The premise seemed both abstract and far-fetched: a man is afflicted with a disease, or a condition, which causes him to walk, suddenly, unable to stop until he eventually drops from exhaustion. But Joshua Ferris makes this more than a conceptual conundrum. He makes it the detailed, examined story of what it would be like to be this man, and have to live life this way, and how such a life would develop, and wander.

Tim Farnsworth is a wealthy lawyer, sort of a schmuck, but good at what he does. There's a lot of suspense built into the way his condition affects his work life (in particular one high profile case nearing trial). There's even more suspense -- the heart of the book really -- about how his suffering extends to his family. He has a loving relationship with a wife and a more complicated relationship with a teenage daughter. The bonds of these relationships are tested, and this gives the book much of its emotional power. These characters are in a very particular situation, but what they go through comes to feel universal.

"The Unnamed" made me feel for the first time in years the impact of large, enduring, unanswerable questions -- questions I thought I'd become inured to -- about the division between the body and the mind, what it means to live in a body that doesn't work the way you want it to, how medical affliction and spiritual affliction are related, and how life is so often out of our control.

It even made me reconsider a word that I don't like very much at all -- soul -- which seemed, in Ferris's inquisitive, insistent writing style, a subject worth grappling with again.

I listened to this on an audio download (got it from Audible.com), read by the author. His voice is so easy to listen to, and perfect for the story. He gets into each character with a lot of feeling but does not over-act the drama, they way professional actors sometimes do on audiobooks.

I may very well read the hardcover now.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tim Farnsworth has a problem. At times, he is overwhelmed by an irresistable urge to walk. Not just around the block a time or two, but to the point of exhaustion, regardless of the weather, regardless of whatever else demands his time, like his job as a lawyer, his comfortable suburban home, his family. His wandering can go on for days at a time, a sort of sober bender, until he is felled by exhaustion. His wife, Jane, manages as best she can, helping him prepare when he knows the compulsion is on him, then picking him up from wherever he winds up, hours, days, weeks later. Despite attempts to gain a medical diagnosis, none can be found. But Tim’s walking is destroying his health, career, his family and ultimately, his sanity.

Of course Tim’s condition seems metaphorical. Wrap it up in whatever works. Maybe it represents the unavoidable base of human nature erupting forth through the plastic garb of civilization and taking control. Ferris says otherwise, that he wanted to explore how sickness strips away one’s life. (the link I found to this interview appears to have gone for an extended walk) His work as a lawyer defines Tim, even to the point of ignoring his family. But his illness takes that away. He loves his family, even his difficult daughter, Becka, but his illness strips that from him as well. He retains his feelings for Jane and his daughter but cannot sustain a normal relationship with them.

I was struck by two elements in the book. Jane manages to hold on to her feelings for and eagerness to connect with Tim long after most would have simply given up. It was a very touching love story. Who would endure so much for so long for any of us? As Tim descends into forms of psychosis, I was reminded of Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man in which his character must contend with a reality that has been thrust on him through no fault of his own, also stripping him of the world he knew. There are ruminations in The Unnamed on the differences between the body and soul, God and religion, nature and the spiritual.

Without God, the body won, and that couldn’t be possible. He was one thing, his body a different thing altogether, and he was willing a separation, in which he went off to eternal repair while it suffered its due fate of rough handling, dirt, and rot. P 221

There are beautiful passages here. Winter comes in for particularly vivid language.

It was the cruelest winter. The winds were rabid off the rivers. Ice came down like poisoned darts. Four blizzards in January alone, and the snowbanks froze into gray barricades as grim and impenetrable as anything in war. Tombstones were buried across the cemetery fields and cars parked curbside were swallowed, undigested…

Another returns to deathly images:

The cemetery had been retired under a white sheet. Darkness now settled over it like dust. A black Mercedes threaded its way through the maze of winding streets. p62

I’m a sucker for writing like that.

I suppose one might see Jane as Ariadne offering her Hercules a way to get home, and he does try, succeeding in some, but not all efforts. There are road trip elements here, particularly when Tim tries to cross the country to visit an ailing Jane. Ferris makes you feel the pain of Tim’s effort to reach home. But that may be reading too much into it. It did work as a love story.

I was involved in the book, eager to read it, resentful when I had to leave it for the demands of daily life. But I also felt conflicted as it headed into the final sections. Tim’s compulsion advances to active psychosis, if we are not to take as purely symbolic the conversations Tim has with his other, interior self. Although I enjoyed the “Shrinking Man” element, intended or not, it all got a bit muddled for me. Tough to follow. My other, inner self rebelled.

Overall, it was a very interesting read, with some gorgeous writing and an intriguing concept. The execution was not always compelling, and wandered a bit towards the end. But The Unnamed is definitely worth a look.

[Kemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you took the scenes from Forrest Gump where Tom Hanks runs across the country several times and mixed that with some sections of The Time Travelers Wife, you’d have an idea of what this book is like.

Tim Farnsworth is a successful lawyer, and he lives with his wife Jane and their daughter, Becka, in upper middle class splendor. Becka has some weight issues and general case of teenage angst, but overall they’re living the American dream. However, Tim has an odd problem. He has twice endured periods of time when he compulsively walks. When in the grips of one of these attacks, Tim will just start walking and is unable to stop himself. After the walks end, he falls into a deep sleep no matter where he is. This can be a tad dangerous if, for example, Tim happens to walk out into freezing temperatures and he isn’t wearing his mittens.

The walking compulsion had vanished before, but it returns as the book begins. Since they’ve been through this twice, Tim and Jane know that doctors and psychiatrists can’t help Tim, and efforts to drug or restrain him just make matters worse. With almost no hope of recovery or answers, Tim desperately tries to hang onto his job, and Jane’s tries to help as they both struggle to maintain some semblance of a life. But the toll of dealing with Tim’s condition is making life miserable for them, and things are about to get worse.

This was an interesting story, but a very depressing read. Tim and Jane are nice people who know they have it good, and are grateful and content with their lives. Reading about how this weird walking compulsion steals their happiness and normality is about as much fun as watching a sack full of puppies get drowned.

[محمدحسین بنـکدارتهرانی · Rating 4 out of 5]

رمان سخت خوان و سخت‌جان و عجیبی بود.پیدا بود که مترجم نقشی در ترجمه ی کتاب نداشته و گروه بازترجمه و ویرایش با زحمت فراوان توانسته بودند از پس ترجمه‌ی چنین اثر دشواریابی بر بیایند

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read an excerpt of The Unnamed right before the release date (a year ago.) It had such a weird set-up, I couldn't get it out of my head, and I wanted to buy it so I could finish the story, and find out what the hell was wrong with the main character. Why did he wander? Was he possessed? did he have a disease? hidden superpowers?

Well, I'm pleased to say I managed finally to borrow this ebook from the library and I didn't pay one dime for it. PHew. Then I read it like a maniac in two sittings. It was kind of short. Thank FSM.

It wasn't a "strange disease" novel, or horror, or supernatural... it was just depressing. And you never really get told what the hell was wrong with the wandering man, you just have these caricatures of the fractured and suffering family.

The story itself flipped between narrative, and a sort of schizophrenic watered down stream-of-consciousness. Is that it? was he schizophrenic? Unfortunately, you just never find out. OH! but a couple of his toes fall off, one is "mummified," and falls off in his sock. I liked that part. Ha!

In fact, the whole story was somewhat like one of those made-for-TV, based-on-a-true-story movies from 15 years ago, that you stumble on when lying on the couch with a cold and flipping channels in the middle of the afternoon. Seriously? What else are you going to watch? And after you've seen the first 30 minutes, you must know how it ends, even if it stars Jennifer Love Spidereyes Hewitt. Except for the part where the TV show tries to give you a happy ending. In Unnamed, everybody gets old and dies in the end, with no answers.

Very unsatisfying, and now I am sleep deprived. Damn you, OCD. I'm going to have to spend more time on my affirmations: "You are a good person. Good people don't have to finish bad books. You are a good person. Good people don't have to finish bad books. You..."

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficile dare un giudizio su questo libro. Ferris scrive meravigliosamente, però sembra compiacersi troppo della sua bravura e compiere un ottimo esercizio di scrittura e basta. Mi è mancato un po' di cuore, che ho trovato soltanto nel finale. Tuttavia il libro non può scivolarti addosso, ti si appiccica sopra, e non potrebbe essere altrimenti perché la malattia ed il dolore che essa provoca non solo su chi ce l’ha ma su chi vive con lui li viviamo tutti prima o poi, purtroppo.
Nel romanzo sono raccontati gli effetti devastanti di una malattia sconosciuta (come dice il titolo) che impone al corpo di Tim, un avvocato newyorkese all’apice della carriera, di camminare senza sosta fino a distruggere sé stesso per gli stenti e la fatica. Il corpo di Tim è dilaniato dalla sofferenza, ma quanto può dolere la sua anima di fronte a tale devastazione, che rovina la vita di Jane, sua moglie, e di Becka, sua figlia?
Un libro angosciante, che, come ho detto, per la tematica affrontata, tocca nel profondo. Avrei soltanto voluto emozionarmi di più e non solo nel finale.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Unnamed” is a fascinating account of a man literally at war with himself – a character torn between compulsion and resistance, body and mind. It is a complex and heartbreaking novel about the effects of disease, both physical and psychological, on a person’s humanity and his relationship with others. Joshua Ferris proves once again that he is a skilled and nuanced writer who posits thought-provoking questions without feeling the need to give tidy answers or even, at times, the semblance of a solution. Now that I’ve gotten the well-deserved praise out of the way, though, I do have to say that the novel, for all its strengths, falls slightly short of both its promise and its premise.

My biggest problem with the book is its lack of narrative consistency. The first parts of the book are brisk and multifaceted, an amazing cross-section of not only the main character and his illness, but also of the world and people around him. The latter part of the book is told as a meandering odyssey; although this tortuous homecoming is beautifully reflective of the main character’s illness, it plays with time and narrative style in a way that feels contrary or at odds with the earlier parts of the novel. Moreover, there are a number of very interesting plot elements (a murder case and a major character’s struggles with alcoholism) that are simply abandoned. Again, I don’t necessarily want tidy endings for all plot points, but they do need to seem purposeful rather than just requisite inciting events or complications.

As a whole, “The Unnamed” was a strange and compelling book that, for me, fell short of its promise.

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty mature stuff for such a young writer to tackle (just look at the dude's pic on the back cover). Power of the imagination, friends! The disintegration of a fully realized contemporary American male adult is displayed here, embarrassment and heartbreak and all.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to Joshua Ferris read this, his second novel. I hadn't read his first (the lauded Then We Came to The End), but I heard good things about this one. And from the very first moments, I loved it. There's two things an author can do with his characters—one is to present every moment of their lives and try to make them round and three-dimensional and all that crap; or, present them in certain moments and allow the reader to infer their three dimensionalness without having it shoved down the reader's throat. This isn't a perfect novel, nor did the author clean everything up or even justify the inclusion of everything. But it was bold, daring, engaging, and sometimes even moving. Taken literally as being about illness or whatever, it's just an okay novel. But when you dig deeper into the metaphor and the relationship (as you could with Time-Traveler's Wife) I think you find a profound if incomplete exploration of the struggle many find themselves in, the war against selfishness, the battle for self-control, especially as it affects our families, the people we love most. Highly recommended, especially with the author's excellent reading.

[Dest · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I have a book crush on Joshua Ferris (or "Josh" as I call him when I talk back to his narration). I super liked And Then We Came to the End and listening to The Unnamed, I felt hypnotized by the soft rhythms of his voice. Oh, Josh. Your new book is so sad. Are you, okay?

Here's the plot: Tim Farnsworth and his wife Jane are happily married, well off, etc. But they are dealing with a strange unnamed affliction. Tim has this problem where he just starts walking and he can't stop. He can't control where he's walking or how long he walks. He doesn't know when the walks will start or stop. He just get carried away by his legs and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

To me, this almost sounds like a funny premise. It has slapstick potential, right? But in my dear Josh's hands it is tragic. It adds stress to Tim and Jane's life the way that a terminal illness would, only Tim can't get the automatic sympathy a named illness would grant.

There is a really interesting look at the mind/body dichotomy in this book because Tim can't control his body and it's ruining his life. So he has a kind of psychotic break where he feels like he's two people: his mind that wants to stay put and his body that demands he walk.

Ultimately, it's Josh's writing that I love. The man has a gift for unpretentious, moving prose. This book is crushingly sad, but not in a way that made me angry or depressed. Instead I felt grateful that I don't have a disease, especially a strange unnamed walking one.

[Billy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The presumably contractually-obligated followup to the blockbuster success of Then We Came to the End. Early on (maybe about 40-50 pages in) I came to that dreadful realization that this book, which I had eagerly anticipated since an Amazon algorithm recommended it, was surprisingly terrible. But having shoved it to the head of my reading queue and having spent $27 for it within days of its January release, I pressed on and got through. It was an undesirable chore, probably similar to the feeling Ferris had in knowing that he had to just keep writing, no matter the block - just keep going, fill in, fill in, fill in! - in order to turn something in by what was probably an already-extended deadline (I say all this knowing nothing about the actual process of writing fiction and not with the intent to be mean, but as an excuse valve for what I see as an underwhelming effort from what I had thought to be a talented author). But if my psychologizing is anywhere close to right, it would go far in explaining his choice of afflicting his main character, a successful middle-aged big-firm New York "trial lawyer" (note to young novelists: if you're going to make law firm life a prominent setting and you're aiming, as Ferris is here, for something near realism, do some goddamn research beyond watching network TV legal dramas and reading Grisham thrillers; also, you might want to develop some kind of concept of money, including how slowly it accumulates and how quickly it goes out, even in the upper-middle class echelon, if you're placing your characters in the New York market; the resources this guy had didn't make him sound like a big firm lawyer, but the heir to an oil fortune; I'm always annoyed with what seems to be a narrative shortcut in supposedly realist fiction where characters are so well-endowed that money never seems to be an object) with an unexplainable condition whereby his body suddenly and compulsorily starts walking, for hours at a time in all weather and to nowhere in particular, immune to any volitional countermand. Unnamed my ass - call it peripatetic diarrhea and then you'd be getting somewhere. But Ferris never does-instead you have to endure repeated dull, surfacey half-thoughts circling around the mind-body problem, and some timid half-steps towards exploring the religious impulse.

-SOME SPOILERS AHEAD -

For most of the first 200 or so pages, the writing was painfully wooden and unimaginative, infected with derivative plot moves and severely under-drawn characters, including what seemed like a blatant lack of empathy for middle age (there was some skill, I will admit, in revealing the fact of the main character's psychosis as his confidence in his own perceptions of reality intermittently unravels). Then I came to the end, where the half-baked dialogue was traded, in the final hundred or so pages, for some rather artful prose; the callow, almost frivolous tone of hapless misfortune switched for something more metaphysically rich, more settled, if still not satisfying or coherent. I have another unsupported suspicion that this last part was the book that Ferris wanted to write, which he perhaps completed and submitted to his publisher first, and that the first two-thirds of it are the result of an editor's ill advice to go back and explain how Tim Farnsworth (the main character) found himself camping in the woods at night in his struggle to do right by the memory of home and happiness. But even with that drastic difference from the first portion of the book, it's hard not to point out that the last 50 pages or so read like an off-brand, less morally articulate version of The Road (and, to continue my baseless speculation, I wonder whether the November 2009 movie version of that book explains the delay in releasing this book till right AFTER the holiday book-buying season.) There's a love story element in here too, but I can't say it added up to much. The one star reflects not just my uneducated stab at the weaknesses internal to the book, but also the disappointment that this did not seem anywhere near as good as his first one.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the start, "The Unnamed" is a gripping read. What seems at first like a pretty straightforward storyline--a married couple struggling with the weight of the husband's ailment--snowballs so quickly, bringing with it so many huge philosophical and human questions. I loved the way Ferris showed this husband and wife trying with such difficulty to keep things together when their uncontrollable conditions work so hard to pull them apart. I imagine it's hard to write about a couple butting up against one another with such force on one hand, and yet so committed and in love with each other on the other.

And then there's the husband's "unnamed" condition, a gradual descent into madness that turns into McCarthy's "The Road." It's a slow trudge into a grim life that you know can only get darker, and yet Ferris forces you to commit to stick around because the writing is so great. You feel deeply the horror of being helpless to your own body, and you go crazy along with the characters.

I was both relieved and sad to give up "The Unnamed" when it was over. Definitely one of my favorite books of 2010 so far, along with "Chronic City."

[Roberto · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tim è un avvocato di successo, è ricco, giovane e sano, ha una bella moglie ed una figlia. Improvvisamente una malattia misteriosa (non conosco il tuo nome si riferisce alla malattia) lo colpisce: senza preavviso le sue gambe cominciano ad andare e lui non è più in grado di smettere di camminare. E cammina per chilometri, salvo poi cadere esausto, ore dopo, nel primo posto che capita.

La storia, basata su una malattia e sulle relative conseguenze, è deboluccia in quanto abbastanza scontata e già vista. Premetto subito che la mia critica non è rivolta alla situazione in sé (malattia e sua gestione), bensì a come questa è trattata nel libro.

Dunque. L'introspezione del personaggio è quasi del tutto assente. Per pagine e pagine assistiamo ai vagabondaggi di Tim senza nemmeno saperne il motivo, senza sapere cosa gli passi per il cervello. Il personaggio della moglie è soltanto tratteggiato. La figlia conduce vita a sé e partecipa solo marginalmente alla narrazione. Manca comunicatività, manca soprattutto empatia con il lettore, che non si sente affatto parte della storia.

Tim cammina e cammina. E questo l'abbiamo capito. Ma l'autore pensa che no, non l'abbiamo capito. E ce lo spiega e ce lo rispiega e poi ce lo rispiega un'altra volta. Senza pietà. Pagine e pagine di camminate (si vede che voleva stancare anche il lettore, oltre che Tim).

Proviamo ad essere seri. Perché Tim deve camminare fino a morire di fatica e di stenti? Cosa ci voleva dire l'autore? L’uomo occidentale, ricco e tecnologico, pieno di certezze, deve soccombere all’irrazionalità del destino? L'uomo, che combatte per trovare un senso in questo mondo, nonostante l'amore per moglie e figlia non è in grado di mantenerne vivo il rapporto?

Non lo so, ogni ipotesi è plausibile e lasciata aperta. Io personalmente non ho colto il punto.

Per me "Non conosco il tuo nome" è un romanzo dilatato, angosciante, deprimente, che gira a vuoto e che mi ha annoiato a morte.

Dire sopravvalutato è ancora dire poco....

Ah, dimenticavo. In quasi tutto il romanzo il sesso è quasi inesistente. Improvvisamente, verso la fine, la moglie per riportare a casa il protagonista gli sussurra alle orecchie:

“Dimmi che non senti la mancanza della tua lingua nella mia fica. Dimmi che riesci a trovare un senso a questo mondo senza questo, senza le tue labbra nella mia fica fino a farmi venire”.

Due brevissime considerazioni:
1) i bravi scrittori dovrebbero cercare di scrivere senza genere. In altre parole dovrebbero far parlare gli uomini come uomini e le donne come donne. Una frase come quella scritta sopra la può pensare solo un uomo (vorrei sapere come fa a sapere una donna cosa si prova a...).
2) Ma era proprio necessario utilizzare questo linguaggio? Questa frase è bislacca e non pertinente con il resto del libro. Forse voleva scuoterci un po' dalla noia?

[Pamela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, repetitive, two-dimensional. The walking away was a clever idea and would have perhaps made an interesting short story. But an entire novel? Nope. It just wasn't enough. By the time I reached the last Jane-Tim reunion, I was seriously considering skipping to the end, reading the last couple of pages and calling it quits. I was fairly certain I had figured out what was going to happen and wasn't interested in wasting the time reading it happen--slowly and boringly happen. Unfortunately, knowing that this was such an "eagerly anticipated" second novel, I gave the author the benefit of a doubt and read on. And on. And on.

I should have gone with my first reaction and skipped to the end as I was right. There was nothing there. No plot-driven revelation. No character-driven revelation. Nothing but more of the same.

My first (and last) experience with Joshua Ferris brings to mind the lines from T. S. Eliot's Hollow Men.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Unfortunately, it was my whimper.

[Mirela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Che storia! Che dire ... semplicemente eccezionale! Ti lascia senza fiato e non riesci a staccarti! Triste, ma tuttavia, bello in una maniera strabiliante! WOW!

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the beginning, I didn’t know what to make of this book but it reminded me of Audrey Niffenegger’s “The Time Traveler’s Wife” because it had some of the same elements. The story here is of a man with an uncontrollable disorder which causes him to suddenly take off, with no apparent warning, on long walks which only end when he collapses from exhaustion. It’s left to his wife to retrieve him from wherever he’s ended up, at any hour day or night. There is no diagnosis, no explanation, let alone a cure, for whatever it is that causes him to do this. He’s a high-priced attorney in a powerful New York law firm and this will have its cost eventually but meanwhile, we have the image of this eminent attorney walking around the office with a backpack full of all the things he’ll need, such as warm clothing, water, and (if I remember) energy bars. Is it tragedy or comedy? Just like in the Niffenegger book, it’s the wife who suffers as much or more because she has to watch her husband deal with this disorder but is a prisoner to it as well. The couple here also has a teenage daughter, who’s caught in all the usual teenage traumas; she’s overweight and has a dad who’s weird in such an embarrassing way that it doesn’t even bear mentioning. She feels he could control this if he really wanted to; not like her with her weight, which is the real problem, but which she’d rather not discuss, either.

The second half of the book is melancholic, poetic and sad; it deals really with the nature of love in a marriage and a family, in dealing with an illness that you can’t see or understand but tears at the fiber of these relationships and destroying lives, leaving this frustrating devastation. However, I couldn’t get a grip on the book, with its weird illness. However, after a month away, it began to occur to me; the book can be seen as an allegory. An illness that often the sufferer feels coming – in the book, he has a kit ready at home and they have a drill for when he “knows” it’s about to happen again – and which takes his family along as helpless bystanders, like watching a locomotive moving slowly towards them and no power to stop it. I began to think of mental illness or more specifically, clinical depression, where the sufferer passes through an episode, there’s no recurrence for months or years and they think it’s over and passed – but it’s not. In this sense, I think the book has clear parallels and combined with the elegant prose, it’s a sort of lament for the devastating effects of an illness that no one can really understand and that receives comments like, “You could control it if you really wanted to. You just need to snap out of it!” Like its victims are just attention-seekers.

Ironically, I read this book while my wife was bed-ridden with COVID during my vacation from work – I followed a few days after – so I had a lot of time to think but the book’s impact didn’t really sink in. I was caught up by the style of a book I couldn’t get a handle on – and I may be completely wrong here – and worrying about my wife. I enjoyed a previous book by Jonathan Ferris, “And Then We Came to the End”, which could also be seen as devastation to a family unit, in that case an office and its co-workers. (Weird coincidence, maybe people found it pretentious and gimmicky because it was written in the first-person plural, a strange device – and I read “The Virgin Suicides” just after, which used the same device!) I’m not sure this book is for everybody and my own take may prejudice anyone else’s by giving them a preconception but it’s worth reading for the writing alone, and may be food for thought as well.

[Allison Means · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this last night. Joshua Ferris, you've done it again. What an interesting story and concept about a man with an unnamable disease that causes him to walk. I loved the details that come in from the story of his life as a lawyer and the case he's working on when we experience his first encounter of the disease after being in remission for four years (or so), to his life as an absent father, and mostly about his relationship with his wife. There are some wonderful insights about marriage and relationships and what something like this would do to them. It's not like cancer or any known disease where you know that it will end or how it will end, which makes the curvature of the story that much more compelling.

The descriptions he writes about what this would do to a person both physically and mentally are brutal, which is what also makes them powerful. Tim (main character) goes through many battles inside his head and then fights his own body. He separates himself from everything he knows and loves because he doesn't want to hurt them by his constant leaving and unexplainable bouts of turning off/into another person entirely.

This is not a happy story or one for the faint of heart for medical conditions, but if you can walk your way through this story you'll be happy that you did.

[sæm · Rating 5 out of 5]

تیم با خودش می‌گفت حداقل یک نفر باید باشد، یک کارشناس توی این حوزه، که تا حدودی مسئله را برایش روشن کند، تسلی‌اش بدهد و کاری انجام دهد. اما دیگر از خیر پیداکردن آن یک نفر گذشته بود. آن یک نفر مرده بود، آن یک نفر خدا بود، آن یک نفر اختراع شب‌هایی بود که به آخر خط رسیده بود و دست‌وپا می‌زد به چیزی اعتقاد پیدا کند. از گشتن دنبال آن یک نفر طاقتش طاق شده بود، از این‌که هربار امیدش ناامید شود. دیگر به خودش اجازه نمی‌داد به وجود یک نفر اعتقاد داشته باشد.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy--life easier ---when I 'never' use to write reviews on Goodreads...lol

This book was great! I read 'it' a long time ago also.

Not a book I haven't read by this talented funny guy, with a heart!

'Joshua Ferris' offers a special 'reading-enjoyment' talent

[Tore Boeykens · Rating 5 out of 5]

als ik naar recensies van de naamlozen kijk, zie ik veel zeer uiteenlopende meningen, dus ik begon al een beetje te twijfelen aan mijn eigen oordeel, maar ik heb enorm genoten van dit verhaal.
er wordt op zoek gegaan naar de sociale problematiek rond ongeneeslijk ziek zijn (in dit geval dan een compleet fictieve ziekte, maar de boodschap is voor mij identiek). hoe niet alleen het “ziek-zijn” het enige gevolg hiervan is maar ook angst, schaamte, druk op familie, dromen die vervagen, hoe hard het leven van mensen in je omgeving overhoop gehaald wordt… volgens mij echt heel mooi gebracht in een unieke setting.
daarboven, de sterkte van echte liefde in dit geheel. “hoever zou je gaan voor uw zielsverwant, waar liggen de grenzen van de liefde en wanneer houdt de uitspraak “in goede en slechte tijden” op om een zinvolle betekenis te hebben”
heb zoveel bedenkingen gehad dat ik niet anders kan dan 5 sterren geven

[Parisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

نیمه اول داستان شروع خیلی خوبی داره و دوست داری کتاب تموم نشه اما به نیمه دوم که می‌رسه نویسنده موفق نمیشه این هیجان و تو خواننده حفظ کنه و منتظری که کتاب تموم شه و جذابیتشو از دست میده.
از متن کتاب :
تنها چیزی که ممکن است غافلگیرم کند این است که ببینم این جماعت دست از نسخه پیچیدنهای احمقانه شان برداشته اند

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I was in 4th grade I wrote a short story called The Daring Four. My teacher, Mrs. Smith, had us illustrate and laminate covers for these and everthing. I thought my story was AMAZING, like would make me a famous 9 year old writer. Basically, I wrote about 4 young girls from Alsip, IL. A slumber party leads to sneaking out and they find a cave, etc, etc...battles ensue. I really thought it was genius. So imagine my surprise when Mrs. Smith told me that it wasn't great because there are zero caves in Alsip. And it occurred to me THEN, at 9 years old, that you really had to think a story all the way through and make sure all parts make sense.

Joshua Ferris apparently does not have a Mrs. Smith in his life. And I'm pretty sure he's older than 8. I hated this book. His writing is disjointed (narration style changes often, it's annoying) and things happen that are just absurd (like as absurd as a cave in Alsip). I'm angry that The Unnamed took up part of my book life. Boo times a million.

If anyone cares, this book is about a guy who can't stop walking. It's really stupid and I fear it will be a movie starring Bradley Cooper in a couple of years.

[Charlie Quimby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lawyer with an uncategorizable and untreatable malady struggles to stay afloat with the help of people who love him. I liked Ferris's THEN WE CAME TO AN END very much, and though this is a different and much darker book, it's similar in the way it brings a mundane work life into the novel, showing how we make our living can be both essential and sadly irrelevant to who we are.

The protagonist's condition — a compulsion to be moving that causes him to leave safe places — is strange when viewed as a medical condition, but understandable when seen as the human condition. (I volunteer with the homeless and see similar behavior. What makes the protagonist unusual is that he is wealthy and seems to have everything going for him.)

At times hopeful or profoundly sad, THE UNNAMED doesn't resolve itself in a wholly satisfying way, but it is beautiful always.

I'd place it above THE DIAGNOSIS by Alan Lightman and THE COMA by Alex Garland, which I've also read. Maybe something's wrong with me...

[Dare · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتابی با ترجمه عالی با موضوعی عجیب که خوندنش سخت به نظر میرسه که خیلی جاها باید ایستاد و فکر کرد.
کتاب
استعاره از انسانی است که نیازهای بی نام جسمش او را به حرکت وامیداشت بدون هیچ هدفی بدونه هیچ ایسمی

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The conceit of this book is whether a marriage can sustain an "unnamed" frightening illness that consumes the husband and literally removes him at intervals from his wife and daughter. Tim Farnsworth, a successful, accomplished attorney, has an affliction that intermittently overtakes him. He walks and walks and walks interminably, with no regard to inclement weather or safety hazards. It may be hours, days, or even weeks before he calls his wife, Jane, from a remote location to "pick me up." In the meantime, Jane and their daughter, Becka, live in constant fear when he disappears. Tim has been to every specialty MD and research scientist imaginable around the globe in order to diagnose and treat this illness. However, it remains a mystery. As his illness protracts, it strains the family's coping mechanisms, challenges the binding love, and threatens to unravel them.

This could have been a spellbinding book. Tim's enigmatic illness is an inventive metaphor for any mighty stressor that can bewilder and impale a marriage. Ferris also uses it to explore the differentiation between mind and body and examine the breaking point of the human spirit. He brings alcoholism into the narrative, which is a clever analogy to the walking illness, as it raises many of the same questions, i.e., is it controllable? Can you conquer it with will--mind over body? Or does the body overtake the mind? These issues were implicit in the novel, but meagerly addressed.

Too much narrative is spent on the grinding details of each walking episode and the frustrated search for a cure. Even the family interventions become repetitive after so many attempts. I was slogging through tedious, overwritten, and bloated iterations that descended into melodrama. And Ferris' use of stream-of-consciousness to illustrate Tim's intervals of incoherence was laced with awkward parody. The third person and very detached point of view was precarious to begin with; it eventually declined into one despairing note. Additionally, he threw in some red herrings and manipulated the reader around some close curves that abruptly or insincerely dissolved.

There was so much potential here. I recognize the brilliant symbolism and the harrowing forces that encumber this family. Ferris is an adroit writer, in that he pens masterful metaphors and riveting ideas. But the narrative pounded like a sledgehammer of Tim's misadventures and devolved into a mere sketch of the family. He should have trimmed these episodes and concentrated on penetrating Becka and Jane; instead, he reverts to informational prose, telegraphing what happens and reporting on how Becka and Jane feel. The sequence of events is communicated through dry and hurried exposition as the climax approaches. It does not sustain, even if his purpose was to heighten the poignancy of Tim's absenteeism from his family. We are swallowed in Tim's illness without the balance of inner dialogue and animated experiences of Jane and Becka (which was present at the beginning of the novel but shifted into the illusory). We dryly observed rather than experienced. The climax was colorless and lost luster in the shadows of stream-of-consciousness. The story became sludgy and stultifying.

I appreciate that Ferris experiments with different styles of writing and isn't stuck on one approach. I thoroughly enjoyed his first novel, Then We Came to the End, which was a socio-comic send-up of an ad agency in its final days. But The Unnamed was undisciplined and self-conscious. I encountered authorial autism and self-indulgence and I checked out emotionally way before I came to the end of this novel. This was a heartbreaking family, but the narrative style was unbearably numbing and prevented my surrender to the story. The execution undermined its purpose and thwarted its brittle beauty.