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Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
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Then We Came to the End: A Novel

by Joshua Ferris

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2,1711151,447 (3.55)90
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Back Bay Books (2008), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 416 pages

Member:thorstone137
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Showing 1-5 of 115 (next | show all)
Although I just started it, I don't like the style and I don't find any valuable content...I'll keep reading it but just "randomly", as I don't think it's worth the time. ( )
  Princesca | Dec 19, 2009 |
Uncomfortable reading in these economic times, this novel--by turns a comic and a tragic representation of life at a rapidly dissolving advertising agency--paints a familiar picture of life in all kinds of offices. I liked it for the humanness of its portrayal of people often seen as cogs in the corporate machine. ( )
  sskwire | Dec 2, 2009 |
Added because of this excerpt posted at the GB Book Club blog."We didn't know who was responsible for putting the sushi roll behind Joe Pope's bookshelf. The first couple of days Joe had no clue about the sushi. Then he started taking furtive sniffs at his pits, and holding the wall of his palm to his mouth to get blowback from his breath. By the end of the week, he was certain it wasn't him.We smelled it, too. Persistent, high in the nostrils, it became worse than a dying animal. Joe's gorge rose every time he entered his office. The following week the smell was so atrocious the building people got involved, hunting the office for what turned out to be a sunshine roll- tuna, whitefish, salmon, and sprouts. Mike Boroshansky, the chief of security, kept bringing his tie up to his nose, as if he were a real cop at the scene of a murder." ( )
  catalogthis | Nov 24, 2009 |
I loved the style of this book, and the rambling, unstructured feel to all of the dialogue, but it left me a little flat. Usually I like snapshot settings, where there’s no back story and you’re just dumped into a narrative (a la Catcher In The Rye), but this book was a bit lacking in anything at all. It was funny, don’t get me wrong, but not as good as I thought it would be. ( )
  gooneruk | Nov 17, 2009 |
I've never watched either version of The Office. I have worked a generic cubicle job during a downsizing. I bought this before most of the reviews came out. Put all that together, and I was very satisfied with the book.

I found the characters and their antics perfectly credible. They were a bit more extreme than in my own workplace, but still in the same family, and you (I) want a novel to be an enhanced (over-saturated?) version of real life anyway.

The first person plural worked well; it was like someone coming home and telling you about their day. Of course, it's when most people don't have anyone at home that their work and personal lives can mesh so unhealthily. Again, familiar and realistic.

I certainly wouldn't want to work with those people. I wouldn't want to work in the corporate environment again in general. And maybe that helped me enjoy it -- knowing I'd recently escaped that world. ( )
  kristenn | Oct 7, 2009 |
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Epigraph
It is not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be a unit;–not to be reckoned one character;–not to yield that particular fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong...
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dedication
First words
We are fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise.
Quotations
"These stupid enduring artifacts–a bar, a song–that stick around after the love has cast his heart into the sea, they are solace and agony both. She is drawn toward them for the promise of renewal, but the main experience is a deepening of the woe."
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Book description
This novel chronicles the decline of a Chicago ad office after the dot-com bust through the collective eyes of its workers.

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 031601639X, Paperback)

Amazon Best of the Month Spotlight Title, April 2007: It's 2001. The dot-com bubble has burst and rolling layoffs have hit an unnamed Chicago advertising firm sending employees into an escalating siege mentality as their numbers dwindle. As a parade of employees depart, bankers boxes filled with their personal effects, those left behind raid their fallen comrades' offices, sifting through the detritus for the errant desk lamp or Aeron chair. Written with confidence in the tricky-to-pull-off first-person plural, the collective fishbowl perspective of the "we" voice nails the dynamics of cubicle culture--the deadlines, the gossip, the elaborate pranks to break the boredom, the joy of discovering free food in the breakroom. Arch, achingly funny, and surprisingly heartfelt, it's a view of how your work becomes a symbiotic part of your life. A dysfunctional family of misfits forced together and fondly remembered as it falls apart. Praised as "the Catch-22 of the business world" and "The Office meets Kafka," I'm happy to report that Joshua Ferris's brilliant debut lives up to every ounce of pre-publication hype and instantly became one of my favorite books of the year. --Brad Thomas Parsons

(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:26:41 -0500)

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