Customer Reviews

Then We Came to the End: A Novel

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

When all the reviewers' blurbs on the front and back of a novel agree that it is "very funny", you know you're being spun. And so it is with 'ATWCTTEnd', which is not very funny, so much as occasionally wry, but more often quite dull. The author has set out to capture the various shades of boredom, angst and ennui in office life and succeeded too well. After a dull day at work you can re-live it at home in print. This may excite reviewers, for whom the terrain is thrillingly unfamiliar, but for those of us grinding out a corporate existence it's more of the same old same old...

We read this in a matter of days. We went through everything together, from pre-9/11 to five years later. Then we came to the end. Problem being, we had no-one to talk to about what we'd just read. So we wrote an amazon.co.uk review.

This is a great modern novel. Its tone is warm but sharp, and it's packed with the anecdotes bartered between employees during the working day which combine in overlapping layers to create a strong narrative peopled with richly painted characters, whose lives are defined by their jobs but who kick against this (some half-heartedly, some more forcefully) most entertainingly. There are a couple of book-long threads, both of which pay off, and a structural trick, which is clear from the title of the novel onwards, and which you begin to doubt maybe three-quarters of the way through, but this too pays off in a surprisingly gripping last few pages of what amounts to little more than epilogue.

Heartily recommended as a memorable picture of American - but universally true - office life, but possibly not the perfect holiday read until the paperback version.

A quirky and amusing book. I am surprised by the number of people who gave this bad reviews, I found it well judged and engaging; insightful on the nature of work relationships and a pleasure to read.

I thought the first person plural a little gimmicky when I opened the book, but I think it's truly justified by the subject matter - corporate life is a bit like being a worker bee and working on behalf of the corporation, dancing to some other tune than your own. (And the book perfectly captures the idiocy and boredom of that too, without itself being boring.)

I thought it was clever and different, but not only that - I thought it had plenty of heart and enough story for me too. Also, it's so hard to write about corporate life - I've seen many try and fail but Ferris pulls it off in my view. Perhaps you need to have worked in a corporation for it to chime as much as it did with me.

But I don't want to big it up so much that you don't like it.

Oh, and though there's black comedy I wouldn't choose it as a comic read - the blurb is a bit misleading.

I can perhaps understand why this book has garnered so many critical reviews. It has a very gentle pace, and the first half of the story is told from an intriguing "4th person" viewpoint. The narrator is never identified, which could potentially be frustrating for those who are expecting more of an easy-going relaxed Holiday-Read.

The first half of the book is also a little confusing and disjointed, with events unfolding via various 3rd parties, jumping back and forth in time, and narrated by the 4th party. You have to want to read it, and you have to work at it. However, there are many "smile" moments. Having worked in a large office, forced to associate with people I would never choose to be friends with, I can completely identify with the premise of the book.

The middle and second half of this novel are more cohesive and, for those 1 and 2 star reviewers, easier to understand. The tale of the night before Lynn's surgery is particularly touching, as is almost every story Benny tells. I can easily envisage this being made into a film with Benny as the main protagonist. It is very like "The Office" with the same comedic elements but far, far darker.

On the whole, I really enjoyed it. I have read many modern novels where at best I found it difficult to "like" the main characters, and at worst actually thought I would cross the road to avoid them (Karl Blomkvist of the Dragon Tattoo series springs to mind!) However I found myself warming to pretty much every character in this book. They are introduced via brief but intelligent thumbnail sketches; the characters are cleverly fleshed out via dialogue and narration and then stripped away layer by layer until you see the vulnerability at their core. You can laugh at their foibles and empathise with their compulsions. Or you can laugh at their compulsions and empathise with their foibles. Whichever works for you!

So, in summation...I can understand why those seeking an easy read would not "get" this book, and would think it dull. However, with a bit of effort and thought, you will really enjoy this book. It's not perfect (a good editor would have been able to give it more mainstream appeal) but I really enjoyed it.

If you have ever worked for a big american corporation or gone through the stultifying strangeness of a company in a downturn, you'll enjoy this book. This book captures the boredom,humour and enforced camaraderie
that situation creates. Yes, it is written in third person plural but that just underlines the fact that this is a story about a specific group. Stick with it - its a fresh and funny read.

I enjoyed this more for the observations rather than any real plot. Yes it is overly long and you do need to stick with it to get used to the third person plural narrative but it is not going move anyones world.

What do a bunch of workers in a post-dotcom boom advertising agency talk about or think about? With the threat of redundancy constantly looming, this book describes the creative escapades and personalities of bored workers in the modern office.

I must say that I didn't particularly like a lot of this book. It reminded me painfully of Douglas Coupland's Microserfs and jPod. Maybe the slow descriptions of mundane events is meant to evoke the triteness and banality of the office life. It certainly nearly made me give up on the book.

However, as the book turns towards the story of Lynn, a partner in the advertising agency, who is struggling to come to terms with breast cancer, we find some merit and humanity in this story. Her employees are both fascinated and sympathetic towards her and it becomes important to the reader to find out what happens.

Overall, I ended up somewhat liking the novel instead of hating it. However, there are better commentaries on the stupidity of modern cubicle life.

Well I finished this book this morning and I really cannot decide whether I liked it or not. The book is set in a failing Chicago advertising agency which is what mainly drew me to the book as up until six months ago I was working in a failing advertising department for a newspaper so I suppose I may have been looking for a little bit of nostalgia.
The characters are the driving force of Ferris' work as until the end not much happens. The characters are fantastic though, you have Marcia Dwyer who has hair from the 80's; Tom Mota who does not leave when sacked; Larry and Amber having an affair; Lynn Mason dying from Cancer and Joe Pope who nobody really knows anything about.
Ferris has captured perfectly office life and the inevitable office politics that comes with it. As I was reading I could identify with so much of it; the meetings about meetings, the pointless e mails; being territorial about your stationary and working alongside people all day but not really knowing them. The events that do happen in the book are gradually built up and serve different purposes. How people behave at work is often a result of what is happening in their personal lives but often at work we do not take the time to find out what your colleague does when they leave the office at night. Ferris also explores through the character of Lynn Mason the fine line between colleague and friend. When her employees find out that she is ill they struggle to decide what to do; should they just ignore that they know or can they rally round and show their support?
I think that Joshua Ferris' book will have anyone that has ever worked in an office nodding in agreement as they read and identifying with the mundanity of work. However for anyone that has luckily not had an office job I am really not sure if they would get it but maybe that's the author's point?

I really enjoyed a lot of this book, perhaps not least because I know the advertising world a bit, but anyone who's worked in an office will recognise the petty intrigues, games and rituals that develop over time.
It could have done with slightly harsher pruning from the editor I feel, but no doubt some of its repetition is to make the point about how repetitious office life is. Very funny in places, very sad in places and thoughtful throughout, this isn't the most up book you'll read, but it's worth a read nonetheless