Then We Came to the End: A Novel Book

Joshua Ferris' novel, Then We Came To The End, is by far one of the most interesting, riveting, and innovative novels that I've read in a very, very long time. It was one of a number of books I opened on Christmas morning, and I have already read my way through it two days later; it is almost impossible to put it down. From the very start of the novel, it is utterly captivating.

What is immediately striking is Ferris' narration. Rather than the usual third-person or first-person-singular narrator - 'He' or 'I' - we are instead presented with the first-person-plural for the vast majority of the novel - 'we'. This use of 'we' as the narrator instantly draws the reader into the text, welcoming us as an integral part of the book, warming us to the characters and the somewhat tragic events that befall them.

Ferris' novel is set during the cusp of the bursting bubble of the dot-com era in an advertising agency that is in the middle of down-sizing, with all of its lower employees forever concerned with the number of lay-offs that they are witness to on a seemingly day-to-day basis. The idea that 'tragedy' could be used to describe their situation may at first seem a little out of place, since they are in fact fairly wealthy, middle-class, white-collar workers. But through no fault of their own, they find themselves one by one diminishing in size at a rapid rate.

The book perfectly recalls the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st, set in a world facing a recession not dissimilar to the one in which we have just found ourselves, making the novel even more of a relevant read in our current economic climate. It is a world in which the workers can find little or nothing to remain hopeful, and that in itself reads like a tragedy.

The simultaneous comedy that is infused throughout the novel, however, is absolutely perfect. It is not often that you can read a book that can lift your spirits with laughter and make you sympathise with the characters' plight at the same time, but Ferris clearly proves himself as an incredibly talented writer in his ability to do just that. We find ourselves laughing out loud whilst reading of their little exploits and pranks that they carry out amongst each other through the course of the workdays, and can't help but recall similar moments in our own office lives - a stolen office chair here, rumours about other employees whispered there.

The duality of comedy/tragedy builds throughout the course of the novel to its critical climax that perfectly combines both within a disgruntled ex-employee. It is a novel only too relevant to us reading it today, and one that I whole-heartedly recommend to you to read as soon as possible. It makes you laugh, it makes you reflect - both on your own life and on the greater aspects of life itself - and it makes you utterly reluctant to stop reading it for even a moment, so desperate are you to discover what will come next. And really, that is all we can ask of a novel.

Then We Came To The End is an absolutely triumphant debut novel from Ferris, which very much deservedly won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for the Best First Novel, and I am already looking forward to reading his second book, The Unnamed, which came out last year. If it is anything like his first, it will be a true stroke of genius.

Then We Came to the End : Paperback : Penguin Books Ltd : 9780141027630 : 0141027630 : 01 Sep 2008 : They spend their days - and too many of their nights - at work. Away from friends and family, they share a stretch of stained carpet with a group of strangers they call colleagues. There's Chris Yop, clinging to his ergonomic chair; Lynn Mason, the boss, whose breast cancer everyone pretends not to talk about.