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Then We Came to the End

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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.
--hachettebookgroup.com

385 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

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About the author

Joshua Ferris

55 books961 followers
Joshua Ferris is the author of novels Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour as well as 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, and winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He was named one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers in 2010. He lives in Hudson, New York with his wife and son.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,993 reviews
Profile Image for Bart.
Author 1 book118 followers
January 18, 2008
Because so many of the GoodReads folks are participants or graduates of MFA programs, and because Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is so obviously the product of an MFA program, I thought to hedge and give this book three stars. But that would be dishonest.

Truth is, but for 34 pages in the middle of this novel, I didn't enjoy Ferris's debut at all. Oh, it's witty and flippant and clever and occasionally funny, but ultimately it's not enjoyable.

It fails for the reason so many MFA-workshopped novels fail: It's a technically proficient piece of writing about unserious folks discovering truths that serious persons generally know long before their 30th birthdays.

Then We Came to the End begins like a sequel to the movie "Office Space", written by Chuck Palahniuk. It's written in the first-person plural, which is about the extent of its original contributions. We this, and we that. It's neither annoying nor enticing - but it seems to want to provoke commentary.

On Page 2, we get this insight: "Our boredom was ongoing, a collective boredom, and it would never die because we would never die."

One of the great discoveries that happens in this novel, over the next 384 pages, is that persons do, as it turns out, die. At the very end of the novel - six years later - we learn that a number of the officemates in fact died. Why kill off these innocuous folks? Who knows? maybe to appear serious?

But there's a piece of writing, an accomplishment of actual storytelling, that begins on Page 196 and treats the pathos of a person recently diagnosed with breast cancer. All the zaniness and shallowness of the novel's first half are temporarily forgotten while Ferris does an exceptionally good job of writing. From Page 196 to 230, this novel transcends itself and its pedigree. These 30 pages are the novel's best pages, and Ferris (or his editor) knows it.

How do we know he knows it? Because after another 150 or so pages of cleverly describing office luncheons and chair-swapping capers and employee layoffs, Ferris comes back to it. He gives his least memorable character the task of reuniting all the unlikable folks from the office, six years after their end, for a reading of his novel.

What excerpt is read? Part of the breast-cancer story from pages 196-230.

On Then We Came to the End's back cover, an author named Jim Shepard writes, "The real revelation here is how moving it all becomes . . ." I disagree.
Profile Image for emma.
2,046 reviews65k followers
May 25, 2021
me and this book have a lot in common (we think that capitalism sucks but we're trying really hard to be funny about it).

this book leaned on cancer a lot more in doing that than i would have, but otherwise we're two peas in a pod.

anyway. this was okay, i guess. i would say it's neither as funny nor as clever as it thinks it is, and when it comes to unlikable literary fiction about the death of society, in 2021 i'm spoiled for choice. this wasn't a standout.

bottom line: just meh!

2.5
Profile Image for Patrick.
275 reviews98 followers
May 6, 2008
It's funny how certain books just come along at exactly the right time in your life. I read 'Franny & Zooey' when I was right out of college and just starting my life as a post-grad in the city, and it really spoke to me. I read 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' the summer before my senior year, when I was panicking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and it completely changed the way I looked at myself and the world around me. If I had read 'Then We Came to the End' 3 years ago, I wouldn't have understood or appreciated it as much as I do now, removed from the rat race just enough to still remember it vividly, but not so entrenched that I still harbor the same bitterness about that world.

I worked at a corporate job for just over 2 years when I was fresh out of college, and I was completely miserable doing it. The long hours, the shitty treatment from people higher up the ladder than you, the gossiping and backstabbing...it's really no way to live. And yet, even though so many of us feel this way, we still trudge to our cubicles every day and put up with the same sad song and dance day in and day out, longing for the weekends and bemoaning how quickly they pass, all while doing nothing about it, even going so far as to scoff and be incredulous about the mere prospect of making a change.

Joshua Ferris is a product of this world, but he's one of the lucky ones who found the strength to escape. His recognition of the corporate world is obvious when speaking about the universal feelings of the office worker, and his use of 1st person plural as a narrative device is the sort of gimmick that wouldn't work, or would be too precious or cute, in any other setting, but perfectly captures the tone for such an environment. By referring to each individual character in the novel on their own terms, but keeping the voice of the novel as 'we', Ferris is able to strike a perfect balance of connecting the reader to the larger picture and relating to his protagonists while also making each one feel like a real person with their own quirks and charms. Everyone knows a Benny Shassburger, the guy around the office everyone goes to to vent, or a Karen Woo, the ice queen who always seems to be right about everything. Yet the beauty of the narrative device is also connecting these individuals to the greater whole. It's easy to forget that these vibrant characters also feel the same quiet desperation as the rest of the group. It's a neat trick, and it works because a corporate office is the sort of place that fosters these common feelings among unique individuals who you never really know.

And that brings me to one of the main themes of the book (at least in my opinion), the tenuous bond we have with the people we work with. In other words, the feeling that for all the time we spend with our co-workers, we'll never really know them in any tangible way, and that, vice versa, our co-workers will know us in a way completely different (or even contrary, to) the way those close to us in our personal life will know us. For example, the totem pole that Old Brizz left to Benny, or Tom Mota's affinity for Ralph Waldo Emerson, or even Lynn Mason's much rumored battle with cancer. There are simply things about us that we don't let others see, and this book reflects that perfectly.

The end of the book was perfect as well. When you leave a workplace, you always think you'll be friends with these people forever. After all, these are the people who got you through the day, the ones whose jokes and good humor lifted your spirits when the rest of the corporate world attempted to assassinate your spirit. Then you leave, and maybe an e-mail or two is exchanged, or a drink is had after work before you completely lose touch, and, before long, you find yourself forgetting what people looked like, or unable to place the name of a person you saw every day for years. It's nobody's fault, per se; it's just what happens. People move on, they find new people to have drinks and make jokes with, different coworkers to gripe about, and new bosses to hate. This book shows that, but not in a bitter, resentful way. It just is, and Ferris acknowledges that, and the muted sadness contained in such realizations.

The book was not without its flaws, of course. There were parts that could be conceived as a little preachy or pretentious, some elements that might seem a little too fantastic for the real world. But these are minor gripes, and overall, Ferris handles it all with subtlety and aplomb. 'Then We Came to the End' is a great book that avoids (and even acknowledges, via Hank Neary towards the end) the pitfalls that can easily accompany such a novel. Required reading for anyone who has ever endured corporate life.
Profile Image for Mandy.
33 reviews15 followers
October 12, 2007
OK, I picked up this book because I had read several good reviews of it. And it sounded interesting. I work in an office. This book takes place in an office. I love the TV show "The Office." Some readers of this book compared the two.

Then I read the book. And hated every minute of it. I finished it because I was determined to see why this author got such rave reviews on this, his first novel. Were people reading the same book I was? It wasn't funny. It was tedious. Maybe that's the point, to help portray the tedium of working in that office with those people. It absolutely drove me up a wall that most of the characters are mentioned by their first and last names throughout the entire book. The ENTIRE BOOK of Joe Pope this, Hank Neary, Chris Yop that. I also really hated the author's use of the first person plural. Characters don't do things; you, the reader, and the characters do. We went to talk to Joe Pope. We went to the coffee bar. We wondered who would walk Spanish next. I didn't want to be grouped with those characters because I didn't like them. I felt nothing for them, no compassion, no comradery, nothing. And the use of the pronoun we made me crazy. Who is the narrator of this book? Whose story am I reading? Is it my own?

This book goes on about the tedious, intricacies of day-to-day stuff and these characters I didn't even want to know better way too long. Then, all of the sudden, much time has passed and they're reunited, and I, the reader, am supposed to care. I didn't. And then there's the last line of the book when the narrator intimates that the only ones left are "you and me." I would have thrown that book down right then and stomped on it if it hadn't been a library book!
Profile Image for Matt.
963 reviews29.1k followers
April 14, 2018
“There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?”
- Jenna Fischer as Pam Halpert, in the series finale of The Office.

Unlike the characters in the novels we read, most of us will not be tasked with catching a serial killer, surviving a zombie apocalypse, or otherwise saving the world. Most of us have workaday jobs that – in terms relative to high drama – are mostly ordinary. Despite being ordinary, though, they also can play enormously important roles in our lives. That’s really the point of Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End.

The novel follows a group of employees at a Chicago ad agency as they are whittled away by layoffs. The novel begins with a short prologue set in the halcyon days of the late 90's, when everyone could make a quick buck off the internet, the Towers still loomed over lower Manhattan, and no one had ever heard of a threat level. As Ferris describes it:

It was an era of take-ones and tchotchkes. The world was flush with internet cash and we got our fair share of it. It was our position that logo design was every bit as important as product performance and distribution systems. 'Wicked cool' were the words we used to describe our logo designs. 'Bush league' were the words we used we used to describe the logo designs of other agencies - unless it was a really well-designed logo, in which case we bowed down before it, much like the ancient Mayans did their pagan gods. We, too, thought it would never end.


It does end, of course, and that is where the novel really begins, as the ad agency faces dwindling revenues and cutbacks. Published in 2007, this is set in the wake of the tech-boom bust. Despite being about a very particular time in history, it manages to feel relevant even now. This could very well have been written during the Great Recession, and in a way, almost prefigures it.

Ferris tells this story using with an omniscient narrator using the pronoun "we" rather than the customary "I." I’ve read an author interview explaining that this was meant to mimic the corporate-speak you might find in a glossy prospectus given to investors. Whatever the reason, it is an oddly effective technique, placing you in the office's best cubicle to observe the goings-on. It makes you part of the team; as part of the team, you feel it when people start getting fired – forced to “walk Spanish” – one by one, victims of economic attrition.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you will find the characters endearingly (or not) familiar: the guy who sends the long crazy emails quoting Emerson; the guy who copies books on the copy machine to read at his desk, so people think he's working; the brown-nosing middle manager striving to get ahead; the guy who cares too much about his office chair; the cold, distant boss; the office gossip. Heck, when I think back at my working career, I’m like four of those people in one. Every person you've ever met at work is represented. But the beauty is how these people become flesh and blood. Ferris’s eye for detail (he once worked in an agency like this) is sharp:

Our media buyers, like Jane Trimble and Tory Friedman, tended to be small, chipper, well-dressed women who wore strong perfume and had an easy knack for conversation. They kept bags of sweets in their desk drawers and never gained any weight. They spent most of their time on the phone talking with vendors, the deadening prospect of which made us gag, and for their services, they received random gifts and tickets to sporting events, the blatant unfairness of which angered us with a blind and murderous envy. Because they put the orders in and talked with friendly inflections in their voices, they were bribed with largesse, like dirty checkpoint guards, and we thought they deserved a special ring of hell, the ring devoted to corrupt mayors, lobbyists, and media buyers. That was how we felt, anyway, during our time in the system. When one of us walked the Spanish, and got out of the system, we thought back on those loquacious and smiling media buyers as just some of the nicest people.


I have never worked in an ad agency myself. My wife, however, did a stint at one on Michigan Avenue, and she assures me this is a correct description of media buyers.

Part of the thing that makes Then We Came to the End such a gem is its refusal to be pigeonholed. Yes, it’s a workplace comedy, but in the same way that Anna Karenina was a family drama. (No, I’m not comparing this to Anna Karenina. Yes, this is better. No, I don’t want to argue about it). Early on, Ferris relies on a lot of slapstick and hyperbole. For instance, there is a great set piece involving a man named Tom Mota, his office chair, and an exceptionally hilarious email he sends to his bosses and co-workers. This sets you up to expect something along the lines of a farce. As you get deeper into the novel, though, and the characters are given additional levels of depth and shading, there is a surprising emotional wallop. Ferris achieves this shift by clever changes in perspective, a well-timed chronological leap, and his unerring perception. For example, one of the bosses, an “intimidating, mercurial, unapproachable” woman, is rumored to have breast cancer, leaving her co-workers at a loss:

Our information came from reliable sources but it was only the barest details. Her surgery was scheduled for the following day. The tumor had invaded her chest wall. She was going for a full mastectomy. We had questions for her – was she scared? did she like her doctors? what were her chances of complete recover? But she had not yet said a work about it to any of us and we knew nothing of her state of mind. We might have wondered why she was at work the day before. She needed to get her priorities straight, we thought. But then one of us ever had our priorities straight. Each and every one of us harbored the illusion that the whole enterprise would go straight to hell without our individual daily contributions…Besides, what else could she do but carry on? We had to think that by coming into work the day before surgery, she was refusing to let the specter of death distract her from the ordinariness of life that could very well be both a comfort and an armament…She was exactly right to come into work the day before. Unless she should have stayed at home and ordered in and played with her cats on the sofa. It was really not for us to say.


I am about to leave an office where I have worked for twelve years. The nostalgia is so thick it's hard not to choke on it. In order to cope, I've tried a few things. I revisited this novel, for one, which I first read years ago. Also, I’ve been watching endless reruns of the American version of The Office, which has always been one of my favorite shows, and suddenly feels more relevant to me than ever.

One of the lasting criticisms of the American Office is that it lacked the bite of its British predecessor. Ricky Gervais’s cult classic wore its aggressive cynicism like a Croix de Guerre. The American presentation ended up being a lot different. To be sure, they started off from the same place as Gervais, mocking the alleged dead-end drudgery of mindless office workers. (See also, Office Space). Over time, though, the American Office changed its tune. It was, in fact, a celebration of the workplace as a meaningful community.

That’s how I see it, too. Hating your job is, of course, your prerogative. I have hated mine on many days. And some of Ferris’s characters embody that. But this idea that you are somehow living a pointless existence just because your job description isn’t “New York City Detective” or “New York City Writer” is more than a bit condescending. The meaning of life is the meaning you give to life. I’ve known plenty of people who took incredible pride in what they did, no matter the task.

More than that, I’ve met plenty of lifelong friends at work. Sure, you come across people who are boring, or lazy, or mean, or who heat up broccoli for lunch. But I’ve also found plenty of people who like to drink beer, discuss Game of Thrones, or sneak away to watch a minor league baseball game on a slow afternoon.

My favorite line from The Office is delivered by Creed Bratton in the show’s finale. “It all seems so very arbitrary,” he says. “I applied for a job at this company because they were hiring. I took a desk at the back because it was empty. But no matter how you get there or where you end up, humans have this miraculous gift to make that place home.”

That’s what Ferris captures so magnificently. He can sympathize with his characters’ plight without sneering at them as unthinking drones. He revels in his ad agency’s dysfunction, while tracing the ties that bind them together. He finds the humor in the quotidian, while recognizing that the quotidian is life.
Profile Image for Kelly (and the Book Boar).
2,582 reviews8,796 followers
March 16, 2018
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

4.5 Stars

“You guys are sick in the head,” said Genevieve. “Prove it,” replied Tom.

First things first – I would like everyone to notice that little sticker in the corner of the cover of this here novel indicating that it was a National Book Award Finalist proving that I is kind, I is smart, I is important. Okay, maybe not, but . . . . .



Oh wait, I spoke to soon. I have no recollection of how Then We Came to the End wound up on my radar, but I do remember that I requested both library systems to buy the Kindle edition a waaaaaaaaaaay long time ago. We’re talking like two years. When my wish was finally granted, I woke up real early on Saturday morning, made my cup of Starbucks Veranda Blend in the ol’ Keurig and prepared to commence some slothery in the doublewide reading chair. And then for some reason I looked over at the bookshelves . . . . .



See that red arrow? Yep. I waited years to read a book I already owned. You know what Jack Burton would say about that???? Probably something that would turn my “yay me” into . . . .



So that’s that. Now on with the book.

If you’ve never worked in a large office environment, you may not be able to fully appreciate the near perfection which is Then We Came to the End. But, if you have you will recognize sooooooooo many of your current and/or former co-workers. People like the guy who just got “right-sized” out of his job and is taking the high road . . . . .



Or the guy who knows “right-sizing” is just a fancy term for being laid off/fired and isn’t taking things so well . . . .


(Have y’all seen Falling Down? It’s a pretty good ‘un.)

Or Karen Woo . . . .



Or half of my co-workers this guy . . . .



Or me . . . .



This was a read that was well worth the wait. Written in a style that won’t be everyone’s cuppa of the “we” (I’m no English major so I’m going to call it first person plural and hope that’s close enough to correct that y’all know what I mean), the tales of pointless meetings, pillaging the offices of the recently departed, coffee bar gatherings and cubicle discussions were just like coming to the office for me. Except I’m not smart enough to have ever thought of pulling a Hank Neary . . . .

“Hank Neary was an avid reader. He arrived early in his brown corduroy coat with a book taken from the library, copied all its pages on the Xerox machine, and sat at his desk reading what looked to passersby like the honest pages of business.”

And I’d get fired if I ever said what I really think like some of these guys do . . . .

“What are you doing right now?”

“Well, unlike some people, I’m trying to get some work done. Some people actually generate revenue around here, you handjob.”


Instead on bad days I passive-aggressively sip out of my favorite Office Space mug in hopes that my co-workers will get the point that I’m this close to pulling a Milton . . . .



And make all important decisions using my Jump To Conclusions mat . . . .



Literally the only thing that kept me from calling in sick today was the fact that we get free lunch for March Madness kickoff. God help everyone if there isn’t cake . . . .

Profile Image for Patrick.
15 reviews51 followers
August 29, 2007
I LIKED:
(1) How funny it was;
(2) The first-person-plural voice, which could have backfired but didn't for me;
(3) The guy who quotes Emerson (it was around here that I started to feel actual warmth for the characters, even when I couldn't keep them straight);
(4) The Catch-22ishness (though it wasn't slavishly Catch-22esque, which you might initially think);
(5) The very last line, which maybe could be considered gimmicky, but worked for me and which I read with what I guess I would call a "satisfyingly pleasant shock" (that almost never happens to me in a novel -- the last time it came close was Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity, where the last line suddenly made me remember the first line of the book (conveniently printed on the cover) and I went back to the first line to make sure I understood the implication of the last line, and I had, and wow, that got me, but then the rest of the book wasn't so consistently great, and so I'm not going to count that one);
(6) The fun promotional website, which I wisely did not look at until after I read the book, not that it gives anything away, but because we all know what happens when you look at a debut novelist's fun promotional website and then read her stupid, sucky book.
(N.B. A clever thing about the website is that only the characters that would have myspace pages do have myspace pages.)

HOWEVER, I LIKED LESS SO, MAYBE, ALTHOUGH THESE WEREN'T THAT BIG A DEAL, I JUST CAN'T ENJOY ANYTHING WITHOUT QUALIFICATION ANYMORE, THE FACTS THAT:
(1) It seems utterly implausible to me that a large percentage of a group of people in a cubefarm would (a) know and (b) embrace a Tom Waits song;
(2) The "end" the title references, which (spoiler?) I take to mean "the end of August and first few weeks of September" thing toward the close of the book, which I read with unpleasant shock (it seemed like a calculatedly throwaway line, and I'm not ready for that to be a throw away line yet -- I felt the same way about DFW's "The Suffering Chanel", and I pretty much love DFW and will grant him all kinds of leeway);
(3) I kind of lost track of some of the characters, which is part of the first-person-plural effect, although that's also a benefit of it and anyway I'm happy to blame myself for this
(4) The resolution to the central maguffin ("Design a funny cancer awareness campaign") wasn't that great, but maybe the point was it couldn't be; but I was looking for it to be like The Cheese Monkeys, where the students get a design challenge and you get a chance to figure out what you would do and then you find out what the students did and you're all like, "Chip Kidd, you madman!"

IN CONCLUSION HERE ARE TWO ANECDOTES
(1) The book is set in and spends a lot of time dealing with the (great) city of Chicago and specifically an ad agency in Chicago, and a week or so ago I happened to spend pretty much a whole day in Austin with someone who works in an ad agency in Chicago (!), and I asked if he had read this book which I had assumed everyone in the world knew about, and if it had taken the Chicago ad agency community by storm and whatnot, and he said he had never heard of it.
(2) From reading the book, you would think "this remarkable debut novelist must live in Chicago!" and when you finish the book and read the author description it says something like, "Ferris currently lives in Brooklyn" and I think that's probably the darkest joke in the whole book.
134 reviews218 followers
November 4, 2010
Sorry, haters. Review to come, possibly, as soon as I reclaim my chair--my legitimate chair!

Update: So, yeah, this is a home run. Deserving of every inch of its hype. It's too bad, however, that so much of the buzz focused on comparisons to The Office and Office Space (nothing against those fine entertainments) and the workplace-drone genre of humor. Because this book kind of is part of that on a surface level, but it's so much more--so much more expansive, humane, ambitious, detailed and moving. It hits my sweet spot of funny-sad. I love the funny-sad but I see it done badly so often, so often the funny's not that funny and the sad is too mawkish. But Ferris nails the perfect balance, much like George Saunders and Wes Anderson and They Might Be Giants (all established masters of funny-sad), except that Ferris nailed it right out of the gate. Hard to believe this is his first novel, harder still to believe he'll ever top it.

As a workplace comedy it's terrific, deftly mixing Mike Judge-y observations with gentle forays into absurdism (in one memorable rant, a character keeps referring to bookshelves as "buckshelves"--it doesn't sound funny out of context, but trust me). And the royal-we narration is not gimmicky or distracting. The novel works basically like third-person omniscient except that the "we" flourishes allow Ferris to portray his fractured community as a hive-mind entity. (And the narration has a hell of a payoff in the book's final sentence.) But it becomes more than a workplace comedy--it becomes, if you will, a moral comedy, not just about it what it means to be a white-collar worker but about it what it means to be fucking human.

Early on in the book, the narrator(s) mention that when you start a new job you can't distinguish all your co-workers at first--it's a haze of faces and names until they gradually start coming together and a clearer picture of the community forms. Well whaddayaknow, that's exactly how the Ferris's characterization works in the novel. There are so many characters at first that they are a blur, we can't differentiate or keep track of them, until Ferris goes in for close-ups and we start to figure everybody out. Joe Pope is maybe the best example of this, the mid-level guy who's above the cubicle drones but below the partners. He exists apart from the community, viewed as an inscrutable cipher and possibly an elitist by the group, and thus by us--until an incredible two-hander scene that introduces a kind of moral suspense as to whether or not Joe will do a certain thing. Or there's the dazzling set piece in the middle of the book in which Ferris departs from the royal-we to do a traditional third-person chapter on the boss, Lynn Mason, and how she spends her last night before taking an important step. Finding the humanity within the hive-mind--for both the author and the characters--is a big part of this book's project.

You don't need to have logged time in the white-collar salt mines for this book to work on you, because it's really about communities and group dynamics, how they elevate us and fail us as individuals. Hell, lemme lay my cards on the table: I'm unemployed, a year out of college with no idea what to do with my life, and yet rather than being foreign to me this book was even more poignant because it reminded me of what I don't have, for better and worse. Sure, I've had summer jobs and temp gigs and internships in office environments, but the kind of really intense community that Ferris writes about isn't something I've ever really experienced, and despite all the undesirable aspects of office life in the book, that made me sad. This isn't an anti-office screed like Office Space. I think it's actually filled with love for the workplace, not for the corporate agendas or nitty-gritty tasks but for the communities (sorry to overuse this word) that it creates and destroys at will. And I will say, without spoiling anything, that it builds up to an ending that is sublimely, beautifully ambiguous--the only other ending in its league is Richard Linklater's Before Sunset ("You're gonna miss that plane"). Great art, folks. Bravo.
Profile Image for Ruth.
Author 11 books504 followers
August 16, 2008
I wanted to like this book, but it just didn’t work for me. To vault directly to the ending, that in particular let me down. Big fat gimmick. If that was one of the main purposes for the use of the first person plural, then I felt somewhat like the victim of a shaggy dog joke.

At first, the first person plural seemed fine with me, but ultimately I think what it did was, instead of involving me as a participant, as part of the “we,” it distanced me from the book. On reflection, I think it was because we are never given a glimpse of who the “I” is behind the “we.” When someone says “we,” it is an individual speaking even if in so doing they represent the collective “we.” I never had a feeling that things were different here, that “we” was a true collective voice, yet I was never given the slightest glimpse of who this representative of the collective “we” is. Instead, for me, the voice of “we” became an impersonal outside observer instead of a participant in the story.

At first I thought the book was funny, well, amusing anyway. But I tired of all the smartass wisecracks. I can see where Ferris made an effort to go deeper, with his implied criticism of Cubicle World, and with the section on Lynn’s cancer. These were the only things that redeemed the book in my eyes, but nevertheless I thought they were weak.

It may be that I am the wrong person to critique this book, having never been exposed to this world at all. There may have been all sorts of cues I was missing. Nevertheless, I thought it was a young man’s book, similar to many young men’s art debuts, so interested in surface form, in trying to be hip or beyond hip, that the bubble is stretched so thin it breaks with only a faint pop.

Profile Image for Jr Bacdayan.
211 reviews1,866 followers
May 9, 2014
There are some things in these pages that l can’t understand. You see, I have never worked my entire life. I mean like any kind of paid work, never, silch, squat, nada, zero, nope. And when I really think about it, I think I don’t want to do any kind of work. Sitting in an office doing stuff? Manual labor? Wall Street? Science shit? President-ing? The heck is that about? I dunno, seems like shit. But then you begin to think about the money. All those times you wanted to buy something but you didn’t have money to spend, then you think: when I grow up and get a job I’ll buy a ton of these. Of course, now I’d have no use for a ton of elmo mugs, fucking Sesame Street, but maybe I can vary it with some big birds and cookie monsters. Now that wouldn’t seem so bad. So, yeah, money makes work seem like growing dollars on trees (or whatever currency you choose, including dogecoins and doubloons). Walk the plank, matey! But really, I don’t think that it’s fundamentally -and yes I think I mean fundamentally -different from school. You do stuff that’s required of you then you get something in return for the work you do. Only in work you get money, in school you get criticism. Fucking schools! Yeah, maybe you get a diploma one day, someday. But that doesn’t compare shit to all those times a professor says your work isn’t good enough. I paid you money, you bastard! I paid for the paper that cleans your shit! But then you think maybe you didn’t and some other guy that he says did a good job did. Maybe I paid for some soda drink that led to him getting diabetes then. Now that’s a better thought. Sucker should eat more chocolates. But isn’t that a grand way to go? Fuck, couldn’t even get it right. Then all you get is piece of crap paper in return saying this bloke has been abused enough to deserve further abuse from employers in the future. There’s not even a thank you for all your money on that crap. Worse, they make you wear a friggin robe and a funny hat while listening to some whino say he was abused too only just a century earlier. Maybe now you’re thinking, what an asshole. What a stuck-up who’s never had to work his entire life. I guess you’re right. I guess I am an asshole. But maybe I’m just saying shit to get you to like this review. You know, like-whoring and stuff. Like this pls. 1 like = 1 prayer. 1 share = 10 prayers. Ignore if u love Satna. Pls. plz. Oh wait, wrong site. Maybe the stuff of legends are whinos like me complaining about their everyday lives, their miniature-compared-to yours type of problems. Then again, maybe not. But when you really think about it, like in this novel, jokes, gossips, petty fights, jealous complaints, crazy stuff are things that make life colorful. I mean, if I was all, thou shouldst read thy book entitled Then We Came To The End as it is a humorous illustration of thou’s living, I bet you’d abandon my shit like fleeing from the plague or a James Patterson review. If everybody was all do-good and i-love-that-tie type of people, trust me, it would be dull. So maybe someone saying fuck David Foster Wallace, fuck James Joyce, fuck William H. Gass because James-The-Best-Fucking-Author-That-Ever-Lived-Patterson is legit, is needed. Because who’d we make fun of and ridicule? We all need that guy who trips on a banana peel to make us feel good about ourselves, that one friend who’d call Paulo Coelho god’s prophet and recommend all his books to us. Because really, if all of these blokes on this site read Infinite Jest and gave amazing reviews to it; you’d be taking someone else’s pills too. Maybe we need that professor giving us crap because who'd hammer us out of our laziness and mediocrity? Maybe we need that piece of crap paper because what'll we use as ticket to that high paying job? So, yeah, I can’t relate to some of the things in this novel because I haven’t worked in an office yet. Though I’ll probably work in one and uncannily I’ll probably end up in advertising as well. But not working yet doesn’t mean I ever felt estranged, because really, anyplace crawling with decent human beings are the same. We are all whinos and fuck-ups deep inside. Some are just more vocal than others, as some are more beautiful, some more idiotic, some crazier, some funnier, some boring. Because deep inside these labels is someone who’ll go to McDonald’s to see some grieving co-worker sit alone on the play area for an hour, someone who’ll listen to Benny’s hilarious stories, someone who’ll cower when a crazy ex-co-worker starts shooting people, someone the same as everybody else. This novel’s about sitting half the day beside someone who you’ll cross the street to avoid. This novel’s about waking up at six in the morning wanting to go back to bed but realizing that you have no friggin choice on the matter. It’s about wanting to say un-stupid things to people that think you’re stupid. It’s about all the things you want to do during the weekend. It’s about your boss being a bloody wanker. It’s about being afraid to confess to your neighbor or co-worker you’ve been in-love with all these years. It’s about that prank you’ve always wanted to pull off. It’s about your problems with your spouse because of a movie. It’s about your unrealized dreams. It’s about the funny thing with breast cancer. It’s about crap. It’s about the daily repetitive cycles we experience, and all the little things that make it livelier, if not better. It’s about things ending, and people adapting. It’s the story of your life and mine.

“Good luck to you. And fuck you for leaving you prick!” Right, so feel free to come back to this review anytime.

The end… eh, maybe not.
Profile Image for Edan.
Author 10 books33.1k followers
April 27, 2008
I was tempted to write this review in the plural first person so that you all would be impressed with how clever I am, but, fuck it, I have a novel to write and papers to grade! (Plus, what if you thought I was speaking in the royal 'we' or the blogger 'we' and the whole experiment just failed?!)

Ferris displays some technical savvy in this book. The point of view tired me out on my first attempt, but a month or so later I returned to the novel with an open mind (and heart, I suppose), able to fall into the 'we' without a problem at all. The way in which the book brings individual characters into focus is pretty terrific, actually. I am forever attached to Tom Mota, for example, after what he did for Janice--and I'm impressed that Ferris was able to connect me in such a way, given the somewhat alienating distance of the "we" voice. Throughout I felt a sort of hatred for the 'we', perhaps because I've never worked in an office, and probably because if I did, I'd be the Joe Pope or even the Lynn Mason: working, working, while some dipshits goofed off in the next office. I am a nerd, and a harsh task master.

My reading experience with this novel was really conflicted. I always wanted to read it, but once I was reading it, I felt annoyed, bored, frustrated--except for brief moments of comedy and sadness that really hit me. But, after being bored/annoyed/frustrated, I'd come back to the book a couple hours later, dying, again, to read it. How is this possible? Maybe Ferris and I need to go to couple's therapy.

I was actually genuinely interested in the advertising the firm was doing, and yet, the narrative would veer away from the actual work (which wasn't paying, but whatever), to discuss a character's gossip for pages upon pages. I understand that this is the point of the book, but it just didn't mesmerize me (except for the 'buckshelves' section, which I still laugh at). The third-person section about Lynn Mason fell flat for me. It wasn't moving in the way it should have been, or could have been.

I did, however, love the last thirty pages, especially the last line, which shifted the point of view from a technical and thematic acrobatic to something poignant and intimate.


Profile Image for Aj the Ravenous Reader.
1,072 reviews1,149 followers
October 28, 2020
Oh wow, it hit too close to home. Although the corporate office setting in the story is quite different from mine, it still feels like Joshua Ferris has mind reading abilities because this is extremely relatable which only goes to show that our work experiences whether good or bad as employees working behind the desk five days a week is a universal truth, something so many of us can relate to.

The writing in the first person plural narrative is a blend of funny and sad because although much of the office truths presented in the story are funny, it's also sad knowing that your connection with your colleagues will mostly end at the same setting which is the office because for some reason, you barely make personal, genuine connections with your colleagues and your friendship only usually lasts while you work in the same area, although I’m quite glad about the reunion of the characters in the end, happier about the fact of the catalyst for that reunion. Lol.

At some point, the plot felt a little bit drawn out, events and dialogue kind of felt repetitive, and it got a little bit boring but it's still very much worth a read, quite memorable, and entertaining. It makes you think a lot too.

P.S. Can you keep a secret? Like Hank, I read this one while in the office. Please don't shoot. If only I could publish my own novel as well.

Profile Image for Lena.
Author 1 book384 followers
August 20, 2007
I had a love-hate relationship with this book. We got off on the wrong foot to start, since the blurbs had led me to expect the read to be a laugh-filled riot. It does have its funny moments, but the overall tone was much more despairing than one would expect from its copy. In addition, the large cast of characters and first-person plural narration left me grasping for someone to relate to. I kept reading mainly because I enjoyed the references to my hometown.

About half-way through the book, however, something shifted. I began to notice how the book’s structure mirrored the actual setting of the story, and, like a new office hire, I began to feel more attached to the characters as I spent more time in their world. I became fascinated by the questions posed by the narrator, including how well we can ever really know people we see every day, and how we find meaning in the surreal world of the modern office. Though I wasn’t thrilled with the literary gimmick revealed at the end, I got enough involved in the story to feel a sense of personal connection to the people whose fates were discussed in the last chapter, and I closed the book with a much greater sense of satisfaction than I expected.
Profile Image for Julie Ehlers.
1,115 reviews1,502 followers
September 19, 2015
Like a lot of readers, I approached Then We Came to the End with a decent amount of wary skepticism. Could Joshua Ferris really pull this off? The first-person-plural narration? The multitude of characters? The humor in the face of such a depressing situation? The plight of a forty-something woman with breast cancer? Fortunately for all of us, the answer is an enthusiastic yes. I don't really know how Joshua Ferris did it, but he created something really special with this novel. It's hilarious and heartbreaking and, even though at the start you can't imagine sympathizing with most of the characters, eventually you root for them in spite of yourself. It's almost like working in a real office: You don't love or even like everyone, but if you spend enough time together you become a family of sorts, invested in everyone's outcome.

As an ardent fan of Catch-22, I initially scoffed at the comparisons of this novel to Joseph Heller's masterpiece, but I'll be damned if I didn't come to agree with them: Then We Came to the End has the same large cast of characters, the nonlinear timeline, the smarts, the absurdity--plus, most importantly, the ability to wring both humor and compassion from such a grim scenario.

I tried to read this book once before, back in 2008 when it first came out in paperback. At the time, the financial crisis was in full swing, and I was, for the first time in my adult life, working for a company that was part of a much larger multinational corporation. I had a vague fear of being laid off, and this novel only magnified it and made me depressed. I had to put the book down and suspected I'd never pick it up again. I don't know why I decided to read it now, but I'm so glad I did. For a first novel, this is an unbelievably impressive achievement, from the first page all the way to that warm, clever last line.
Profile Image for Steve.
251 reviews944 followers
April 6, 2012
Back in simpler times, network sit-coms reigned supreme for vegetative pleasure. Even some further down our list of favorites could provide mild, mindless fun. I went into this book expecting something similar. It didn’t take long, though, to realize that this was a cut above that. Ferris pieced together something funnier and more knowing. To couch it in sit-com terms, it was like those episodes of MASH where the normal humor and sarcasm would give way to something serious and poignant. They were effective because we were made to like the characters first so that anything bad happening to them would have greater emotional mass. I won’t give away any of the book’s major plot points, but I will say that there were parts, especially in the middle section which really stood out, where some trenchant events were set up very well by a lighter touch beforehand.

The book is set at an advertising agency in Chicago in the not so distant past. It’s an ensemble cast of mostly mid-level creative types doing whatever it is those types do at the office. Their activities included: working, gossiping, joking, politicking, backstabbing, note-comparing, consensus-gathering (about important non-office issues), and reflecting on their own situations, often tinged by paranoia. In other words, just what you’d expect. One thing that makes this different, though, is the first person plural narration. It was odd at first hearing “we” and “our”, but the device actually turned out to be pretty effective. Each character within the “we” is developed separately and thoroughly, but no single one of them becomes a dominant voice in the telling of the story. I suspect Ferris had good reasons to go with the collective we. It may have been a way to comment on group-think and the good and bad aspects of a team approach. Or it may have been a way to render unbiased opinions (without being omniscient) simply by mixing divergent views into an average. In the process, the idiosyncrasies of individuals are made to stand out against modern office orthodoxy. But what do I know – those are just guesses.

What I do know is that there were some characters worth caring about. The middle section I referred to earlier was a good example. It was like a separate, but connected story. In fact, it was no longer the first person plural narrator. Instead, a sensitive and insightful all-seer took their place. Lynn, the talented and respected boss, faced an ordeal, or rather didn’t face it, at least not head on. Her proactive, achievement-oriented MO went AWOL. Other characters had issues to resolve, too. Some succeeded, and some didn’t. It wasn’t Andy Griffith, but it wasn’t Curb Your Enthusiasm either.

So from my experience you should go into this expecting a few grins, some mildly amusing banter, and a mise en scene from the likes of Dunder Mifflin, but come away knowing you got a fair amount more than that. This was a solid 4 stars effort.
Profile Image for Amanda.
282 reviews313 followers
August 7, 2013
In fairness, this book is more of a 2 1/2 star, but given the tyrannical nature of the star system I am forced to go with a 2. Typically, this is the type of book I like--sarcastic, cynical, and funny. I really enjoyed the first half of it, but then got bogged down by the halfway point. I've worked in an office scenario like this and easily recognized the stereotypes depicted by Ferris (part of the fun in the beginning was recognizing and assigning real life names to the characters, "Oh my God, that is totally Bubba!"--obviously names have been changed here to make sure I don't get my butt kicked by a former colleague). Part of the problem is that Ferris is so good at describing the minutiae of day-to-day life in an office--the petty bickering, the fight for the best office supplies, the gossiping that takes precedence over work--that I eventually began to feel like I was going to work every time I picked up the book.

This is not a bad book and it certainly has its merits. Ferris uses a peculiar point of view throughout the book that I have heard others complain about, but I found it to be one of the strong points. The book is told from the "we" perspective, as though such is the mediocrity of their carbon copy lives that the mindless office drones can no longer think for themselves and instead think as a collective. As the book goes on, we begin to see individual characters emerge--usually as they are laid off from their jobs and, thus, their individuality is returned to them. In some cases, the individual character is someone who has become the poster child for a particular office stereotype and is granted an individual name based upon the collective's view of this person as "different" in some way: the person who is always last to know, the person who is always the first to know, the storyteller, the noncomformist, the perfectionist, the couple engaged in the interoffice affair. Also compelling is the stand alone chapter we get from the perspective of Lynn, the boss who is diagnosed with breast cancer and who struggles with keeping her private life and fears separate from the office.

As a whole, this was a clever conceit that would have done well as a novella, but it was wearing pretty thin by the 385 page mark. Watch Office Space--it does it better.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
Profile Image for shellyindallas .
107 reviews55 followers
August 8, 2008
I really, really, really enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't a life changing experience, it didn't inspire me to be a better person, or to follow my dreams. It was just a fun read. I'll turn 37 in a few days and for the first time in my life I'm working in an office building, in a cube. Before I got this job, I thought The Office and Office Space were funny, but now I really get them. It's the same with this book. I don't think you have to work in an office to get it, but it's sort of like having Cancer--unless you've had it, you only know about it on a superficial level.
The novel takes place in an ad agency in Chicago. At first I thought, Oh, I'm not going to be able to relate to these characters. I HATE admen/women. I HATE the advertising industry. What kind of person spends their days thinking up ways to dupe me into buying shit I don't need? Bunch of Jerks. But then at one point Ferris's narrator describes himself (and his co-workers) as "hired guns of the soul." (or somethingtothateffect), and I was like "So they know?" Of course they know. And that's what's so fucking tragic about this story. Most of us have to set our alarms Monday-Friday so that we can get our asses out of bed, leave dream-time and comfort behind, and head off to our cubes. Most of us have un-fulfilling, soul-destroying, creativity-robbing "careers". We spend the day under and in front of artificial lights, surrounded by muted grays and taupes, at first anxiously awaiting lunch, and then anxiously awaiting five o' clock. But the sad and hard truth of the matter is, as the book poignantly affirms, we need these jobs. As much as we may not want our jobs, we really don't want to lose them. So we make the best of it. We gossip with and about co-workers. We come up with new ways to waste time. We compare our jobs and our lives to others that suck worse. Commiseration: It makes the world go round.

Before I go I feel compelled to mention that as much as I liked the book, I felt the end dragged on a bit. So go ahead and skim the last couple of chapters, you'll get the gist.

Also, if you happen to be reading this and you happen to be one of those rare folks whose job is financially, intellectually, and spiritually rewarding--I don't want to hear about it; please keep it to yourself.
Profile Image for Berengaria.
526 reviews107 followers
April 5, 2023
3.5 stars

A melancholy novel with “tears of a clown” type humour focusing on the staff of an ailing Chicago advertising agency's personal dramas in the years 2000-01.

Warning: if you are a reader who wants a small cast of characters, a linear plot line, a logical time sequence, a traditional narrative voice (preferably 3rd person, simple past) and can't read about cancer or the deaths of colleagues, this is NOT the novel for you.

“Then We Came to the End” has a gaggle of named main characters and no clear plot line emerges for a good hundred or so pages. And the narrator? Unclear until the final sentence. Up till then: "we".

Ferris uses this unique 1st person plural (we) to create the feeling of a single entity comprised of many different characters which speaks in a tone somewhere between office gossip and a granddad reminiscing about the good ‘ol days.

I’m very impressed by how well that works and how well it allows the reader insight into the hivemind of the company staff, without ever losing sight of the individuals.

Midway through the novel, a plot finally does emerge (cancer, lots of cancer), although most of the harried, directionless staff are still primarily concerned with other things (being fired, not having good enough ideas, paying bills).

It’s not a light read.

I loved Mr Ferris’ artisanship and liked his characters quite a lot - even the nasty or clueless ones - but felt the story dawdled far too long at the beginning and the final chapter was largely unnecessary, plot-wise.
Profile Image for Leo Robertson.
Author 36 books471 followers
January 25, 2024
LOVED this one!

This time around I knew about the "structure" going in, knew what to expect and knew I was in the mood for it. It's genuinely funny and filled with beauty and pathos. What made me cringe about it before was how unready I was for its truths, really--myself an office worker, writing this in an office (on my lunch break! I swear!)

It captures the absurdity, the tragedy and the creeping addiction to comfort that comes with this bizarre lifestyle--no less bizarre on account of how common it is.

(MILD SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING)
As clever and insightful as it is, it can't help but stick a positive landing. A vibe of "nevertheless grateful." A "not so bad after all." Which, to be fair, is perhaps one of my most beloved facets of American culture: the positive spin by default, which is sincere more often than not. So it felt like an earned ending I myself was grateful for.

But this environment continues to feel like an absurd struggle from which escape is tenuous, and I do hope that someone comes up with, beyond documenting it, some solution for something better...

PREVIOUS REVIEW:

Hard to deny the writing skill in this one—dense with little vignettes that move seamlessly between each other.

It's pitching heavily for Heller, which is why the humour is so pointedly depressing, but the jokes don't crash land with the same density, I think partly because I'm delightfully fatigued by American mediocrity porn (oh wait! Are you telling me adulthood might not look how I pictured it when I was 10? Why, I never woulda thunk it! Do say why, dear chap!) also because Joshua Ferris is still having trouble getting over the fact that he's not Joseph Heller, so I can see the strings and zippers of his devices through the cracks in his voice's authenticity.

An aside: you're damn right I can see zippers through the cracks in a person's voice's authenticity!

'What did Heller do in those great first two books of his? Well, in the first one he used new characters to hammer home the same point over and over, and in the second he reeled off setpiece after setpiece to spiral the reader into inescapable office-life gloom. Okay so let me start plotting this out. Spiral 1: something depressing happens to someone with a silly name. Details later. Spiral 2: same. Spiral 3: same. Two pinches of compassion, dollop of Foster Wallacian tragedy-in-burger-king Americana absurdity, wink at judges, hold hand out for National Book Award.'

That is to say, you can't be a writer without having been absolutely awestruck by writers before you, and yet it's dangerous to assign yourself deliberately to one tradition, because your heart is the instrument of your words and it existed well before you knew what the hell Catch 22 meant—but who can remember when they didn't know what Catch 22 meant? It's a bit of a... what's the expression I'm looking for? (ha, ha.) But when your favourite author only wrote like 6 books or something, what's the harm in giving the world a pretty damn good simulacrum of #7?

Love this writer and Ferris' next books are surely unmissable and killer!
Profile Image for Mark.
1,126 reviews148 followers
June 22, 2008

The first thing to say about this book is that no matter what else I think about the plot, the themes, the point of view, or any other aspect of this novel, it was compulsively readable, which in itself is a mark of how fine a talent Joshua Ferris is.

In some ways, he is plowing the same ground as Douglas Coupland and Dilbert, but without the manic surrealism of the one or the cartoonish brevity of the other. Virtually the entire plot of "Then We Came to the End" takes place in a few floors of a high-rise Chicago office building, home to an advertising and marketing agency. The characters are the copywriters and artists who occupy the cubicles and their bosses, and the obsession of the book is the relationships they have with each other and with their work.

The entire arc of the novel is set against a decline in their business and the drumbeat of layoffs, so that as the book moves along, one after another of the crew exits the building, usually clutching one pathetic box of "useless shit", as the unnamed narrator puts it.

At first, I feared the entire book would be about the personal relationships and habits and put-downs and shifting allegiances of the workers, without any actual discussion of what they did for a living, but in fact some of their advertising work does find its way into the story.

In particular, a shifting set of pro bono campaigns for breast cancer becomes one of their momentary obsessions, and they seem to trace directly back to the much feared and admired boss, who herself has received the diagnosis, but who is more than a little ambivalent about going through with her treatment for it.

The central kernel of the novel concerns her personal journey through the diagnosis and her relationship with a lawyer who she hopes will see her through it, and that one short story within a story almost felt to me as though it was the original writing that Ferris did, and that he then decided to build the rest of his book around it. It has a vulnerability and power that the rest of the book lacks, despite its entertaining tales of everything from the copywriter who was bequeathed an Indian totem pole to the manic employee who may or may not be planning to pull a Columbine on the office after he's laid off.

"When We Came to the End" wants to be a philosophical reflection on the meaninglessness of consumer culture and the art of promoting it, on the ways in which work we don't enjoy or respect consumes our lives anyway, of the myriad ways that the social network of an office triumphs over its actual mission. It isn't quite profound enough for all that, I fear, but the strong storytelling, the vivid characters, and the saving grace of that one cancer story give it enough power to make it a winner.
Profile Image for Robert.
Author 11 books433 followers
December 9, 2013
First person plural isn’t a voice I often see in fiction, even though I did happen to read two of these books rather close together. Both had omniscient voices taking a look at multiple characters (the former was a family and this one was an office). Both were humorous, and both strung zany along with a dog leash and shock collar, zapping my mind at the most inopportune of times, and jolting my reality with more than just innuendo. But that’s where the similarities end, and I must say I couldn’t be more pleased with the resulting differential equation.

If you’ve ever considered your coworkers weird, and believed wholeheartedly that you were the normal individual in this corporately bureaucratic world, this book is for you. If you’ve ever walked down the hallway and had to physically restrain yourself from throttling a coworker about the neck, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wondered why management couldn’t get their shit together, and instead started firing people left and right without any rhyme or reason, and you found yourself sucking your thumb on the unemployment line, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to walk out of a corporate meeting, because the idiot behind the podium has diarrhea of the mouth, and can’t seem to close his mouth for more than two seconds to answer a flippin’ question, even as you’ve waved your hand in the air for the past five minutes, this book is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to strip to your underwear and run through the halls screaming that the entire office staff, including administrative assistants and accountants, are all a bunch of morons, and that you’re done with this place, this book is for you.

So, yeah, at this point we’ve probably pretty much included everybody. And that’s okay, because as the economy pretty much shoves its thumb up its own butthole, you’re going to need a good laugh as you’re walking Spanish (shitcanned) and polishing the turd. THEN WE CAME TO THE END delivers laughter and chuckles amidst the corporate machine otherwise known as greed, and I couldn’t help but get caught up in the debauchery.

Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
Profile Image for Katerina.
852 reviews756 followers
Read
October 2, 2016
A forerunner at my come-on-you-need-to-read-this list, so dull it hurt my eyes, so today I gave it another go and - no, still dull, hate this style, "are you sure you want to delete it?" oh hell, never been more certain!
Profile Image for Cecily.
1,187 reviews4,529 followers
September 8, 2010
First person tale of life in a US advertising agency approaching a downturn in the 1990s. Tries to be funny, quirky and to mix humour with poignancy, but doesn't deliver. It was neither funny enough to justify its implausibility, nor interesting enough to justify its lack of humour.
Profile Image for Ravi Gangwani.
210 reviews104 followers
March 22, 2017
Every ship is romantic object except the one we sail in.
And almost nothing is more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worth wasting it on.


This is simple office story where simple different characteristics join and time was very crucial as the lay-off drama was going on. Someone is writer. Someone is gossip satellite. Someone is reticent. Someone is pregnant from someone nearby. Someone is depressed. Someone is in loss. There are lots of Someone's.
And the boss of all of them have cancer whose secret remain no longer secret to others.
At times this entire book was to me was like as I am sitting in my own office and staring at people.
As a debut novel of Ferris, whose 'Rise again ... ' I simply loved I would say this was pretty average book because around 100 pages of it I felt very dragging. But the ending of the book saved its grace.

3.5/5 as my take
Profile Image for Nancy.
Author 21 books1,083 followers
December 12, 2008
Possibly it's not fair that I rate this book, as I was unable to finish it. I enjoyed it at first, but as the pages wore on (and on, and on) with nothing in them of forward motion or tension (I understood there was no plot and was willing to go with that, but I needed something, something -- please!), I lost interest. Another problem was that there was only one character (the woman boss with cancer) to care about at all. Even my own many years' experience of cubicle-ville failed to help me stay involved. My (unfair) judgment: A self-indulgent mess. I actually ended up stuffing it into a 1-800-GOT BOOKS pickup dumpster.
Profile Image for Gregory Baird.
196 reviews780 followers
February 10, 2017
“Do you realize how insane we’ve all become?”

In the post-Dilbert world of “The Office,” examinations of the everyday absurdities and indignities of office culture have become more and more commonplace. But rarely are they captured with such acuity, humor and grace as in Joshua Ferris’ stellar debut novel, “Then We Came to the End” (a New York Times top 5 fiction book of 2007). Office ennui is relatively easy to portray because, let’s be honest, anyone who has ever worked in an office has experienced it firsthand. But Ferris goes deeper than that; he does nothing less than capture the zeitgeist of inter-office relations and how it affects us as human beings, smoothly wrapping it all up in a bitterly funny package.

The cubicle-dwellers inhabiting “Then We Came to the End” and its unnamed advertising agency are, by nature, not the stuff of epic fiction. This, as Ferris so aptly puts it, is “a story set in the pages of an Office Depot catalog, of lives not nearly as interesting as an old man and the sea, or watery-world dwellers dispelling the hypos with a maniacal peg-leg.” These are real, everyday people struggling to maintain their humanity in a corporate environment that threatens their individuality, consumes their lives, and is utterly necessary for them to survive. It’s the ultimate love-hate relationship. So when lay-offs come calling, it brings out the best and, more often, the worst in the employees. They are often well-intentioned but mostly petty; they bicker, they tease, they steal, and they casually defame, they gossip, they trick, and they maneuver. But they also support, worry, joke, laugh, love, and try to reform. These are people who are just trying to make it through the daily grind with their dignity intact – and to them the ultimate indignity would be to be escorted out by security with all of their meager possessions in a box while their former co-workers try not to get the stain of association on them.

Ferris captures the complex, wide-ranging spectrum of emotions and attitudes that fester in the workplace. Jealousy, friendship, annoyance, and love – all existing hand in hand and ever-present, even when it seems like they would contradict each other. When a co-worker succeeds, our unnamed narrator remarks that “we were proud, astounded, envious, incredulous, vaguely indifferent, ready to seize on the first hint of mediocrity, and genuinely pleased for him.” That, my friends, is life, Ferris understands it, and he captures it brilliantly.

As an added bonus, “Then We Came to the End” is also wickedly funny. There are inspired hijinks related to rampant chair-swapping and a vindictive office coordinator, a client asks the firm to capture the funny side of cancer in an ad, and our employees – ever advertisers – re-touch the photo of a young girl in a missing poster because they think people will be more likely to respond if she doesn’t look so pale and her smile isn’t so crooked. But there is a deadly serious streak as well. One character is grieving her murdered child, another one deals with illness (and not so well at that), several people are downsized, one employee considers abortion while another struggles with depression, and a burst of violence shocks everyone near the end. But Ferris, a deft writer in only his first outing as a novelist, seamlessly blends the dramatic and the funny without ever losing his wickedly satirical tone.

Characters may come across as callous, which may turn some readers off, while others may wonder what the point of this little exercise is (clearly, they’ve missed it completely), but I for one thoroughly enjoyed this book and have been feverishly recommending it since I finished it yesterday. And I can’t wait to see what the promising Ferris comes up with next.

Grade: A-
Profile Image for Andy.
32 reviews2 followers
October 29, 2007
I came upon this book on one of the book blogs I read after it was short-listed for the National Book Award. The reviews compared Joshua Ferris' debut novel in tone & content to "The Office," the best 30-minute network sitcom since Seinfeld and a current obsession of mine. So, Then We Came to the End sounded like it had good possibilities. And when I came to the end of it, I found myself having enjoyed it, despite some obvious flaws.

I have to start by commenting on the first-person plural narration because it is something that is unique and identifiable about this book, and it's cleverly also embedded in the title of the story. I thought it was effective for the most part, especially in our initial tour of the office when we're trying to get to know all of the characters (and there are a LOT). What Ferris gets out of the "we" that a writer of lesser talents might neglect is real emotional content: "We were still alive,... The sun still shone in as we sat at our desks. Certain days it was enough just to look out at the clouds and at the tops of the buildings. We were buoyed by it, momentarily. It made us 'happy.' We could even turn uncommonly kind." Those kind of sentiments, even when they are surrounded by playfulness and absurdity and awful cynicism, they still worked for me.

Ferris also shows great ability to craft characters. This is a novel largely built around the idea that corporate America at the dawn of the 21st century is hollow and absurd and that we want nothing more out of life than security and stasis. To that end, there are plenty of characters here who fit into that faceless corporation mold, and who only pop up to show how sad & unfeeling our society has become (the office coordinator, for example). But there is a heart to these people, and that is evident in characters like the deranged Tom Mota, the clueless Jim Jackers, the totem-pole worshipping Benny Shasburger and the always professional Joe Pope. I think the danger that Ferris faced in writing this novel was relying too much on stereotypes in the workplace, because there are weird people in every office, but there are enough REAL human people here to latch onto to carry you through the story.

On the down side, the novel definitely loses its momentum in the second half. There are essentially two halves of the corporate tale, interupted by a 30-page interlude where we lose the first-person plural voice and we find an unexpected meditation on mortality and loneliness. That interlude was where the novel first surprised me, and I was excited that we might be headed somewhere far deeper and darker than I had expected. But the promise of that interlude was not realized in the second half. We return to the every-day and there comes a real heavy plot device that brings the story to a close, and there is an even more contrived device to bring all these characters together in a reunion. There is also a significant nod given to the events of 9/11, and how those events may have triggered a change in corporate culture, but it is only a nod, and it is not commented upon at all during the reunion post-script.

All in all, it was worth the read. It was entertaining and well-written, and it had a heart to it, but it didn't have the guts to weigh in on every question it raised, or take the reader to a place of greater understanding or sympathy for these people, and in that, I thought there was an opportunity missed.
Profile Image for Mark Bailey.
195 reviews29 followers
December 31, 2021
A sardonic, derisive account of office life. Regardless of whether you have worked in an office environment or not, Ferris proficiently portrays many of the stereotypical characters so often found in workplaces of all types.

Casting a vast array of characters, the novel effectually confronts the sheer banality of employment, with the first-person plural narration perfectly encapsulating the mindless, lack of self-identity that transpires amidst rampant collective monotony. As a result, there are glimpses of satirical artistry, as the characters descend into petty squabbling, trivial quarreling and boredom infused madness.

Perhaps slightly too exhaustive and spiritless (despite being the point) in parts - there are some similarities to The Office TV series by Ricky Gervais given its thematic content; overall worth a read.
Profile Image for Baba.
3,733 reviews1,137 followers
March 27, 2020
'A brilliantly insightful tragi-comedy about the office workplace and the human condition!' was my one sentence review back in 2008, when I read this (I am adding this book to Goodreads in 2020). It could be argues that Ferris took a huge risk using first person plural narration across the cast, but it works to a tee. Like my love of TV shows The Office and Parks and Recreation it has a good mix of angst and pathos as well as humour and absurd-ism. A book that also taps into the reality of workplace relationships ... how much do you really know your work colleague? Do you know them at all? 8 out of 12.
Profile Image for Tara Everhart.
4 reviews2 followers
March 9, 2008
I've been bed-ridden with some mysterious illness for days and, because I "accidentally" lost my copy of Botany of Desire and also because I hate t.v., I borrowed my boyfriend's copy of Then We Came to the End. I more ate it than read it, finishing it in less than 48 hours. I will freely admit that when you make this choice, you open yourself to the possibility of missing choice prose, and just reading for plot points in your bleary-eyed state. This might be possible if you were reading Lolita, but in this case, I don't feel too much remorse. ANYWAY, having acknolwedged my bent perspective, I give it a C. The prose and diction are about as sophisticated as J.K. Rowling's. The characters are friendly, familiar stereotypes with mostly predictable physical traits and vices. Occasionally, Joshua Ferris touches on an affecting, inscrutable moment, like Benny's fascination with the totem pole, but it almost seems like he struck gold accidentally. The moments of planned poignancy, like the breast cancer centerpiece, bother me less for their manipulativeness (we all WANT to be emotionally manipulated by a book, don't we?) and more for their clumsiness. The development of a character into full fruit requires more than just giving her both strength and weakness, more than just showing her drinking a bottle of wine and lusting after a commitment-phobic lawyer. I mean, come on. I hope that people are more complex and meaningful than that. What this book lacks most is detail; the attention of the author to detail can convert a stereotype into an uncomfortable reality, through force of our ability to absorb and imagine the circumstance, with their peculiar textures and hues. Moving to a different medium, I just saw 3 Kings, which employs stereotypical characters of the armed forces variety, but because of the emotional availability of Mark Wahlberg and the strange and singular humor of David O. Russell, goes beyond that. When the American soldiers are storming a building, and an Iraqi soldier runs by with an armful of blue jeans, or when Mark Wahlberg suggests the substitute of one more acceptable racial epithet for another, you feel like you are launched into a (skewed) form of reality. I don't think this book ever surpasses the level of the Harry Potter books, which is totally consumable because of its loveable characters and relateable themes, but without poetry, detail, or a unique perspective, remains more pulp fiction than literature.
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