Then We Came to the End: A Novel - Softcover

Ferris, Joshua

3.46

35,184 ratings by Goodreads

9780316473781: Then We Came to the End: A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316473782 ISBN 13: 9780316473781

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2017

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

A special Tenth Anniversary Edition of the dazzling National Book Award finalist.

"What looks at first glance like a sweet-tempered satire of workplace culture is revealed upon closer inspection to be a very serious novel about, well, America. It may even be, in its own modest way, a great American novel." --Los Angeles Times

Ten years ago, Joshua Ferris burst onto the scene with Then We Came to the End, a hilarious, urgent novel about where most of us spend the majority of our time-the office. Ferris's debut was nominated for a National Book Award and was selected as one of the top ten best books of 2007 by The New York Times, Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly.

Every office is a family of sorts, and the Chicago ad agency Ferris depicts is family at its best and worst, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. As they attempt to stave off the inevitable, the cast of this expansive epic contend not just with job loss, but with breakdowns, break-ups, and rounds of Celebrity Death Match that force them to confront their own mortality.

With an unerring 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. Hailed by the New York Times as "expansive, great-hearted, and acidly funny," Then We Came to the End proves to be every bit as relevant and relatable as it was when it first appeared.

"As funny as The Office, as sad as an abandoned stapler, Then We Came to the End is that rare novel that feels absolutely contemporary, and that rare comedy that feels blisteringly urgent." -Time

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"Expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny. . . . A perceptive and darkly entertaining novel."--New York Times Book Review

"Very funny and impressively observed. . . . Original and inspired."--Washington Post Book World

"A masterwork of pitch and tone. . . . Ferris brilliantly captures the fishbowl quality of contemporary office life."--The New Yorker

"A charming and sometimes very funny story of worker bees pushed past the brink of boredom....Ferris maintains a wonderfully wry tone and has a fine observational eye for all the absurdities of the modern workplace."--USA Today

"Fabulous. . . . With the sort of exuberance and energy that marked Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City."--Chicago Tribune

"Not too many authors have written the Great American Office Novel. Joseph Heller did it in Something Happened (the one book of his to rival Catch-22). And Nicholson Baker pulled it off in zanily fastidious fashion in The Mezzanine. To their ranks should be added Joshua Ferris, whose THEN WE CAME TO THE END feels like a readymade classic of the genre. . . . A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness."--Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times

"Ten years later, [the book] still speaks with urgency, charm, and a dose of mordant humor."--Bill Tipper, Barnes & Noble Review

About the Author:

Joshua Ferris is the bestselling author of three novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour and a story collection, The Dinner Party. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers in 2010. He lives in New York.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.