Wednesday 27 February 2008


TITLE: THEN WE CAME TO THE END

AUTHOR: Joshua Ferris

DATE PUBLISHED: 2007

DATE READ: January 2008

NOTES: A story of office life set in an ad agency in Chicago. It is told in the first person plural – so the “we” becomes an amorphous mass, shifting and changing with no clear narrator. This is a very clever device. It could have been clumsy but it works amazingly well. The book is very funny on all the tiny (and less tiny) irritations of working with others – the pettiness, jealousy, lies, thwarted ambition etc. He is particularly good on the “rumour mill” of working life. Tales spread (so they must be true because everyone has heard them) but no-one can ever track down how a rumour started in the first place.

The writing is exuberant and the story multi-faceted – funny, painful, tragic and absurd.

This is a fine piece of work – a brilliant debut novel which is hard to categorise. Will be interesting to watch out for his future work.



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