Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris - Back Review

 For this first "Back Review" I am going to go with a book I read about three or four years ago. I randomly picked the book up in a bookshop. This is something that would almost never happen now, as I tend to over-think my book purchases. It had good reviews on the back and sounded like just the type of comedic, but elegantly written novel I was looking for at the time. The book is titled Then We Came to the End.

Then We Came to the End (Back Bay Books, 2007) is the debut novel of Joshua Ferris. It follows the lives of office workers at a Chicago advertising agency during the economic downturn of the 1990s. The characters are eclectic and odd. Yet, if you have ever worked in an office environment you will immediately recognize them in those around you. Their lives are insignificant and pointless. Their reasoning is often irrational. However, they are very funny.
This is the type of book that can, and will, make you both laugh and cry. 

The book draws on a number of intersecting stories to achieve this balance of comedy and tragedy. However, it sticks with its characters enough to let them all have their own story arcs.
The book is written in a non-linear manner, but it is not hard to follow. Still, I do not think the non-linearity was necessary, or added anything, to the story.

The book is told in a broad narrative style. It strives to make the reader part of the narrative. This technique never feels overdone and does a great job of making the reader feel at home in the novel. Towards the end it comes off a little cliche, but not necessarily in a bad way.

The prose is crisp and clean. One of my favorite paragraphs in this book comes early in the first chapter. It is a great example not only of this cleanliness, but also the themes in the book:
"...Might it be true, as we sometime feared on the commute home, that we were callous, unfeeling individuals, incapable of sympathy, and full of spite toward people for no reason other than their proximity and familiarity? We had these sudden revelations that employment, the daily nine-five, was driving us far from our better selves. Should we quit? Would that solve it? Or were those qualities innate, dooming us to nastiness and paucity of spirit? We hoped not."

This paragraph seems a nice ending summation of what to expect from the novel. If you work in an office and like to read I think you will enjoy Then We Came to the End. 

Please let me know what you think about this post, the book, or my blog in the comments below. Thanks for reading.