Then We Came to the End: A Novel
by: Joshua Ferris
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Amazon.com Review:
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
Product Description:
No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.
With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.
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
Product Description:
No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.
With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- A Spectacular Debut
The We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is a great debut novel by a obviously gifted writer. His prose is well crafted and humorous.
The novel is a work of satire. Set in an advertising company at the time of its downfall, the book features a wide cast of characters who all possess their own uniquely human virtues and vices. It will make you laugh hard one page and cry on the next.
The book is not written in a linear manner so keep that in mind while reading. The book is ... Read More
Rating: 
- Inside the office
This is a funny, entertaining, and perceptive (fiction) story about personal inter-actions in advertising agency that is encountering hard economic times. Definitely worthwhile reading that may tell many of us something about ourselves.
Rating: 
- Lightweight novel says little early and often
This book was passed on to me by a friend who praised its comical look at office culture. The blurbs, back cover summary, and reviews all invite comparisons to "The Office" and "Office Space", both of which mine absurd humor but also pathos from the modern day cubicle careers so many of us face on a daily basis. Simply put, this book, by comparison to those excellent satires, is flat and shallow with uninspired characters engaging in uninteresting banter about insipid matters. The copywriters and designers ... Read More
Rating: - I wanted to like this book, I really did.
I was so eager to read this book.I spent more years than I care to remember working in a PR office, so I thought this book couldn't fail; even if it was light-weight and/or badly written I would like it, I thought.Wrong.I gave it a good try, 100 pages or so. But at the end of the 100 pages I felt no connection with any of the characters and, even more deadly, I hadn't laughed or snickered once.Sorry for the negative review.I give it 2 stars for a good attempt.
Rating: - I put in a lot of effort and never got to the end
I tried and tried and tried to like this. But I just couldn't get in to the story of the pathetic lives of the office workers and their gossip. I expected it to be sort of like Office Space because - hey: I have the pathetic life of an office worker so I thought I would get the joke. But like an Oliver Stone film it just seemed to carry the same theme on and on and on without much of a story arc to keep me going. I totally respect anyone who loved the book. It just wasn't for me.
- A Spectacular DebutThe We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is a great debut novel by a obviously gifted writer. His prose is well crafted and humorous.
The novel is a work of satire. Set in an advertising company at the time of its downfall, the book features a wide cast of characters who all possess their own uniquely human virtues and vices. It will make you laugh hard one page and cry on the next.
The book is not written in a linear manner so keep that in mind while reading. The book is ... Read More
- Inside the officeThis is a funny, entertaining, and perceptive (fiction) story about personal inter-actions in advertising agency that is encountering hard economic times. Definitely worthwhile reading that may tell many of us something about ourselves.
- Lightweight novel says little early and oftenThis book was passed on to me by a friend who praised its comical look at office culture. The blurbs, back cover summary, and reviews all invite comparisons to "The Office" and "Office Space", both of which mine absurd humor but also pathos from the modern day cubicle careers so many of us face on a daily basis. Simply put, this book, by comparison to those excellent satires, is flat and shallow with uninspired characters engaging in uninteresting banter about insipid matters. The copywriters and designers ... Read More
- I wanted to like this book, I really did.I was so eager to read this book.I spent more years than I care to remember working in a PR office, so I thought this book couldn't fail; even if it was light-weight and/or badly written I would like it, I thought.Wrong.I gave it a good try, 100 pages or so. But at the end of the 100 pages I felt no connection with any of the characters and, even more deadly, I hadn't laughed or snickered once.Sorry for the negative review.I give it 2 stars for a good attempt.
- I put in a lot of effort and never got to the endI tried and tried and tried to like this. But I just couldn't get in to the story of the pathetic lives of the office workers and their gossip. I expected it to be sort of like Office Space because - hey: I have the pathetic life of an office worker so I thought I would get the joke. But like an Oliver Stone film it just seemed to carry the same theme on and on and on without much of a story arc to keep me going. I totally respect anyone who loved the book. It just wasn't for me.
