Then We Came to the End (#8)

I have been a bit negligent in keeping up with my reading/book posts... but then again, I have been a bit negligent in reading in general.  While still having a quite respectable pages read per day tally, it's going to be a real challenge to meet this year's self-imposed reading goal.

And it's also going to be a challenge "discussing" this book as I finished it several weeks ago.  It is evidence of my short-term memory loss, especially when it comes to books.  We'll talk about that phenomenon a bit more with the next book post.  But Book #8 of the 2008 was Joshua Ferris' Then We Came To The End.

Ferris' debut novel earned a place on my "to do" list thanks to making several "best of"/year-end lists last year and was also a finalist for the National Book Award.  If squint at the graphic to the left, you can probably guess it is an office place comic novel... more specifically taking place in a Chicago ad agency at the turn of the millennium and at the beginning of what becomes of big wave of massive layoffs... and thus the somewhat ominous title.

Their is a smart/hip-ness to the novel pretty much from the start (just don't think it's a literary version of The Office) as Ferris employs (ha!) a quite odd and challenging first-person plural narrator... so it is a quite foggy "we" that tells the story (for the most part).  But for anyone who has ever worked in an office you are quite aware of that special group (i.e. "us" vs. them) entity... as we weave a tale of personal tragedies, office pranks and the rumor mill, and oodles of odd personalities.

The novel is quite brilliant at times... take the opener:

We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise.  At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen.  Most of us liked everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything.  Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled.

But ultimately, I found it all to be a bit indulgent and pretentious... and as is often the case, I succumbed to to the hype and it didn't quite meet my expectations.  As always, I always kind of feel bad about that as I should be going into a book with the proverbial blank slate... but then again, if it wasn't for the hype I wouldn't have read it in the first place.  A lot hinges on what one thinks of the narrative/tonal shift that occurs about 60% into the book.  That's where I wasn't quite sure what it was thinking or where it was headed... and it's not like I didn't like that part of the book... but it was was off-putting... but then again, I guess that's life, changing on the dime.

Ultimately it become one of the those book where I liked the parts more than the whole.

2008 1-2-3-4-5 Reading Challenge: + 383 Pages (Total: 2,943 pages - Finished: 3/24/2008)
0 pages ahead of pace (-91 change in pace since last book).