Then we came to the end: a novel

*Starred Review* Anyone who has ever logged time in a gray cubicle with cloth walls that wouldn't hold tacks will be astounded at the accuracy of this first-novel portrait of the workplace demimonde. Set in an unnamed advertising firm in Chicago, it grabs readers on the very first page like an executive assistant who can't wait to share the latest HR rumors. The firm is laying off employees, and as the quirky staff-cum-family alternately turns to and turns on one another, the reader plays eavesdropper to the unnamed narrator (who speaks in the first-person plural). He (or she) documents Benny's wild adventures with an inherited totem pole; the full catalog of Marcia's relentlessly eighties hairdos; Jim's lame but earnest ad pitches; Joe's inflexible professionalism; office leader Lynn's breast cancer; and the riotous yet painful mental breakdowns of not one but three pink-slipped workers. At their final gathering, the coworkers discover that their intimacy is a function only of proximity; no number of e-mails, lunches, or phone calls can substitute for the binding power of office walls. While the prose veers off into amusing tangents, like an associate trying to waste as much of an unproductive afternoon as possible, the author always returns to the story at hand. It's a 375-page, 3-martini-lunch of a novel, and you'll have it read by quitting time.--Mediatore Stover, Kaite Copyright 2007 Booklist

In this wildly funny debut from former ad man Ferris, a group of copywriters and designers at a Chicago ad agency face layoffs at the end of the '90s boom. Indignation rises over the rightful owner of a particularly coveted chair ("We felt deceived"). Gonzo e-mailer Tom Mota quotes Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the midst of his tirades, desperately trying to retain a shred of integrity at a job that requires a ruthless attention to what will make people buy things. Jealousy toward the aloof and "inscrutable" middle manager Joe Pope spins out of control. Copywriter Chris Yop secretly returns to the office after he's laid off to prove his worth. Rumors that supervisor Lynn Mason has breast cancer inspire blood lust, remorse, compassion. Ferris has the downward-spiraling office down cold, and his use of the narrative "we" brilliantly conveys the collective fear, pettiness, idiocy and also humanity of high-level office drones as anxiety rises to a fever pitch. Only once does Ferris shift from the first person plural (for an extended fugue on Lynn's realization that she may be ill), and the perspective feels natural throughout. At once delightfully freakish and entirely credible, Ferris's cast makes a real impression. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A debut novel from an author whose short fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Best New American Voices 2005, and Prairie Schooner, this work depicts the offices and cubicles of a Chicago advertising agency located on the Magnificent Mile. The employees are quirky, neurotic, and self-involved, but the radical laws of the workplace force them together, and they rely on one another more than they care to admit. Through the anxiety and animosity of layoffs, missing chairs, and office pranks, their collective life story is always at the forefront of the narrative, evoking both great delight and emotional pain as we watch each character come to his or her own end. Ferris repeatedly pulls us in by capturing multiple conversations at once and methodically expanding the space between words with humorous, thoughtful insight to highlight details in those ordinary moments. Regardless of vocation, you know these people, and, what's worse, you see yourself in them. With so many books on office life, it's nice to see someone add fresh spark and originality to the subject. Nick Hornby praised this as "a terrific first novel," foreshadowing a positive public reception. Recommended for all public libraries.-Stephen Morrow, Columbus, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This debut novel about life in a Chicago advertising agency succeeds as both a wickedly incisive satire of office groupthink and a surprisingly moving meditation on mortality and the ties that band. Though Ferris only briefly invokes Catch-22, he transfers that novel's absurdist logic, insider's jargon and indelibly quirky characterizations to the business of brainstorming and creating advertising--or at least pretending to stay busy lest one be considered dispensable. After the breezy pacing of the opening chapters presents the cast as indiscriminately eccentric, the plot deepens and relationships become more complicated, with the individual eccentricities of the characters defining their humanity. During a downturn in business, people keep disappearing, either fired or dead. Fired is worse, especially for those who remain, because the fired often refuse to disappear. These coworkers know each other like no outsider can, yet generally have little idea what the lives of their fellow employees are like outside the cubicle. In fact, the novel rarely ventures beyond the cubicle and the conference room, making Ferris's ability to sustain narrative momentum all the more impressive. The narrator is an ingenious device, a nameless one who uses the third-person "we" to suggest that he (or she) might be any one of the office group. Yet since most or all within the office show that their perceptions are seriously skewed, the reader is never quite sure how much the narrator can be trusted. There's a crucial interlude, a chapter in which the "we" disappears, and a character who had seemed more like a caricature to those who work for her reveals her flesh-and-blood complexity and ultimately raises the novel to a higher literary level. The funhouse mirror here reflects the office dynamic at its most petty and profound. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Anyone who has ever logged time in a gray cubicle with cloth walls that wouldn't hold tacks will be astounded at the accuracy of this first-novel portrait of the workplace demimonde. Set in an unnamed advertising firm in Chicago, it grabs readers on the very first page like an executive assistant who can't wait to share the latest HR rumors. The firm is laying off employees, and as the quirky staff-cum-family alternately turns to and turns on one another, the reader plays eavesdropper to the unnamed narrator (who speaks in the first-person plural). He (or she) documents Benny's wild adventures with an inherited totem pole; the full catalog of Marcia's relentlessly eighties hairdos; Jim's lame but earnest ad pitches; Joe's inflexible professionalism; office leader Lynn's breast cancer; and the riotous yet painful mental breakdowns of not one but three pink-slipped workers. At their final gathering, the coworkers discover that their intimacy is a function only of proximity; no number of e-mails, lunches, or phone calls can substitute for the binding power of office walls. While the prose veers off into amusing tangents, like an associate trying to waste as much of an unproductive afternoon as possible, the author always returns to the story at hand. It's a 375-page, 3-martini-lunch of a novel, and you'll have it read by quitting time. Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

In one of those highly anticipated debuts (foreign rights boomed), the American Dream comes to an end for a group of workers in a deeply downsized office. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

A debut novel from an author whose short fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Best New American Voices 2005 , and Prairie Schooner , this work depicts the offices and cubicles of a Chicago advertising agency located on the Magnificent Mile. The employees are quirky, neurotic, and self-involved, but the radical laws of the workplace force them together, and they rely on one another more than they care to admit. Through the anxiety and animosity of layoffs, missing chairs, and office pranks, their collective life story is always at the forefront of the narrative, evoking both great delight and emotional pain as we watch each character come to his or her own end. Ferris repeatedly pulls us in by capturing multiple conversations at once and methodically expanding the space between words with humorous, thoughtful insight to highlight details in those ordinary moments. Regardless of vocation, you know these people, and, what's worse, you see yourself in them. With so many books on office life, it's nice to see someone add fresh spark and originality to the subject. Nick Hornby praised this as "a terrific first novel," foreshadowing a positive public reception. Recommended for all public libraries.—Stephen Morrow, Columbus, OH

Another debut is Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown. 2007. ISBN 978-0-316-01638-4. $23.99), a riot of a novel about characters caught in the office politics of modern work-in this case at an ad agency. It is brilliantly conceived and told almost entirely in first-person plural-the "We" is a collective narration of characters who slowly become individualized as layoffs begin and the story coalesces. Ferris is witty, insightful, and exuberantly wicked in his examination of workplace culture. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

In this wildly funny debut from former ad man Ferris, a group of copywriters and designers at a Chicago ad agency face layoffs at the end of the '90s boom. Indignation rises over the rightful owner of a particularly coveted chair ("We felt deceived"). Gonzo e-mailer Tom Mota quotes Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the midst of his tirades, desperately trying to retain a shred of integrity at a job that requires a ruthless attention to what will make people buy things. Jealousy toward the aloof and "inscrutable" middle manager Joe Pope spins out of control. Copywriter Chris Yop secretly returns to the office after he's laid off to prove his worth. Rumors that supervisor Lynn Mason has breast cancer inspire blood lust, remorse, compassion. Ferris has the downward-spiraling office down cold, and his use of the narrative "we" brilliantly conveys the collective fear, pettiness, idiocy and also humanity of high-level office drones as anxiety rises to a fever pitch. Only once does Ferris shift from the first person plural (for an extended fugue on Lynn's realization that she may be ill), and the perspective feels natural throughout. At once delightfully freakish and entirely credible, Ferris's cast makes a real impression. (Mar.)