Product Description: This wickedly funny, big-hearted novel about life in the office signals the arrival of a gloriously talented new writer. The characters in Then We Came to the End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work."
Amazon.com: Amazon Best of the Month Spotlight Title, April 2007: It's 2001. The dot-com bubble has burst and rolling layoffs have hit an unnamed Chicago advertising firm sending employees into an escalating siege mentality as their numbers dwindle. As a parade of employees depart, bankers boxes filled with their personal effects, those left behind raid their fallen comrades' offices, sifting through the detritus for the errant desk lamp or Aeron chair. Written with confidence in the tricky-to-pull-off first-person plural, the collective fishbowl perspective of the "we" voice nails the dynamics of cubicle culture--the deadlines, the gossip, the elaborate pranks to break the boredom, the joy of discovering free food in the breakroom. Arch, achingly funny, and surprisingly heartfelt, it's a view of how your work becomes a symbiotic part of your life. A dysfunctional family of misfits forced together and fondly remembered as it falls apart. Praised as "the Catch-22 of the business world" and "The Office meets Kafka," I'm happy to report that Joshua Ferris's brilliant debut lives up to every ounce of pre-publication hype and instantly became one of my favorite books of the year. --Brad Thomas Parsons
A very tough read I'm about a fifth of the way through this book, and I'm having a really tough time getting through it. Like many of the other reviewers, I was impressed by the praise it was getting and was expecting a quick, entertaining read. Instead, reading it has dragged on for 2 weeks (I actually stopped and read Generation Kill, which is the same size, in 2 days in between). A lot of the negative reviewers have mentioned the Office in comparison, and I think that highlights how poorly the characters are developed in this book. On the Office, Michael is a massive douche 80% of the time, but the other 20% is used humanize him, make him sympathetic, and provide insights on why he is the way he is. As a result, you care about the character, and his bumbling comes off funny and less anger-inducing. That is not the case in this book. So far, I have seen nothing to make any of the characters endearing. As a result, you have the guy that plays asinine pranks, the guy that prattles on about his "buckshelves", and the guy that constantly interrups. They are all hateable, because there's nothing that makes them stand out in any way except for their annoying quirks. I don't think I can finish this one, which bugs me, because I rarely put a book down, and I'm also tempted to find out what this "High school writing" ending is.
The real office Everyday we spend the best part of our energy on the people who work with us. That ad hoc family that surrounds us day after day. The people we know better than some our own family, and yet really don't know at all. The agency is downsizing, restructuring any other term they can find for layoffs. Every day brings the anticipation and dread. Will it be Carl, who has been more and more erratic as of late, or Jim, who always manages to say the most inappropriate thing, Karen who can reduce even the most heartbreaking incident into something to be mocked, Chris who pilfers a coworker's chair, or Marcia the acid tongued? Of course we could all be like Joe, perfect Joe, who is always ready when called upon, never joins in the pranks or gossip or complains about being the target of the group's increasingly childish jokes and seems to have the respect of their boss Lynn. Joe will never make the Spanish walk with his belongings in a box, escorted by security. One of their main topics of speculation on the health of one of the agency's partners, Lynn. As coworkers become more paranoid and spend more time talking than working, the layoffs continue. The more employees try to ferret out the less they actually know about their coworkers and about their eventual fate.
Then We Came to the End is a wickedly funny first novel from Joshua Ferris. He has captured the endless quest of the office worker to fill time without actually working. The gossip, the endless jockeying for recognition, the speculation on what's ahead...the aggression and apathy. This was an entertaining book.
Good writing, but not so great story Some really good writing and an interesting premise, but not an appealing read. Is it reading a first person plural narration? Maybe. Or could it be the fact that it's more a vertical story than a horizontal one? I'm not sure. A lot of people like this book, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Funny, smart, dark, moving, clever novel. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I have to think that any reviewers saying this book is boring or bad are just not good readers, or should stick to action packed genre fiction. This is one of the more incredible books I've read in recent years. It's slow-paced but every sentence is delicious...it's incredibly fresh, full of humor and sharp observation about people, work, and life. There are a lot of characters, so if you read it on and off over the course of a couple months, you probably won't feel as engaged with the story...it's a great read if you have time to really plow through it. You'll become incredibly interested in the characters in their glorious weird individuality and you'll become totally engaged in their mundane, gossipy lives. If you stick with it, the book becomes genuinely moving and even truly exciting at its climax. It's incredibly original and such a rewarding read if you have a taste for subtletly, humor, and human observation. If you find yourself bored by it, stick to the da vinci code.
overrated at best... I read 2-3 novels a month, and this one has completely bored me from page one on. Im not sure what he is trying to say, except that we are all stuck in ruts and fear for our careers, and we don't need him to tell us that. Sharing his trivialities of his everyday office life is nothing more than an overblown, unorganized minute by minute journal, written by someone who has nothing better to do then share his day to day boredom with the world for money. I put it down FINALLY at page 74, HOPING...if not BEGGING for it to become organized, thoughtful, and at least slightly entertianing. Needless to say, it was brought to the used book store within a week for exchange.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
