Very rarely does a book inspire me to laugh out loud, much less gasp or start tearing up. This book did all of that (which led to some embarrassing moments on the train) and more. I read it several months ago and still think about it at least once a day - although I do work in an office in Chicago that is facing layoffs, so the parallels are undeniable. But I don't want to sell Ferris short - the book would be brilliant even if it didn't resonate with my real life.

The book's real triumph for me (and perhaps the reason some people are so put off by it) is that so much happens by inference, subtext, and implication. With the single (startling, unexpected, heartbreaking) exception, we never really get inside the perspective of the characters. We see their actions, listen to their words, hear their perspective from them, but their true inner life is the central mystery of the book, much as those we spend our time with are truly unknowable. So those moments when truth bubbles to the surface, when we discover something truly personal about a character, are like shocking twists in a suspense film.

When describing this book, I often say it's like Catch-22 in an office, which isn't really fair, but does get at some central things about the book. First off, the characters' unknowability, then the sheer size of the cast, and the time-jumping nature of the narrative, which goes forward and back and around and through the same central time period. But the thing that both books have at their center is a bruised but extremely loving and generous heart that cloaks itself in jokes and distance because the truth is simply too much to bear. I love this book.

The clever and sophisticated people in this novel begin by acting in petty and childlike ways. They are a group of workers in an advertising agency in Chicago.. Augusten Burroughs's "Sellevision" and Scott Adam's Dilbert strip come to mind. The book is often mordantly funny, although it includes the murder of a child, a death from cancer, a death in military action, and bouts of depression and mental illness. These actions are effectively counterpointed with concerns about such matters as ownership of a chair or decorating an office cubicle.
As the story goes on the characters mature and come to respect each other. I had a vague feeling that there's a deep moral in there somewhere, if I was smart enough to understand it. It uses some narrative gimmicks of the kind I usually dislike, but which are used so effectively that I was drawn in. One schtick is to use the first person plural as a point of view. A large part of the story is told by "we" and not until the last sentence is the reader told who "we' is. Other parts are POV of separate characters, and then, towards the end on of the characters reads from the novel he has been writing about the others. It's complicated but it works.

This is one of the best books I've read in years: really unique, funny, and sad. I was drawn to it initially because of the brilliant cover design - fantastic work by designer Jamie Keenan by the way, and too bad the paperback editions don't reuse the same design - and lucked out judging this great book by its cover.

I think the strongest points of this book are the humorous sections, and the weakest are the drama sections. This is not to say I didn't care about the characters and their sometimes sad, futile work situations. But, there are some stretches of this book that stretched a little too far and I fell my attention wander a bit. Good book, but not the best.

A truly great book and a very very talented writer. You'll enjoy every minute of it.

This is a sketch - painfully dragged out to novel length. Should have "come to an end" somewhere around page 50. I hung in until about page 100, and then threw in the towel. Some friends told me that it got better after that - but who cares?

I came to the book after reading an excellent short story by Ferris
in the New Yorker ("The Dinner Party"). However, it took me a while
after I finished it to decide whether I liked this novel. The use of the first
person plural is different, but I don't think that is what makes the book really
unusual. Inconsequential stories of everyday office life are transformed into
prose that is in places poetic, and in others crass. The mundane nature
of the material he works with made me miss the careful construction of the
story, and the not so hidden subtext.

As other reviewers have noted, the novel really does come together
in the last 20 pages. However, even after I finished reading it, I kept thinking back
about the book - not the specific stories perhaps, but rather the
main ideas and feelings: how the existential fear of losing a job (and in most cases in
the novel, the character's identity along with it), is reflected in the mundane jokes and
worries over being found out with a stolen chair. In the end, I thought it
worked very well, but I can see how others may be disappointed.

I read the reviews on the cover and they all raved, so I bought it. I barely got through the 100 page rule - i.e. you have to read 100 pages minus your age. It's about an advertising agency and the people in that agency so I'm not sure why it would be interesting and it's not. It's so boring and vacuous i did not complete it and can't believe the fuss.

However Josh Ferris is a good writer but Wim Wenders is a good movie maker and his movies are still boring. I can't recommend it.

Finished this engrossing novel this afternoon. Still a little emotionally impaired by it. Still jangled by its compassion and humor. Still reeling with the author's powers of observation.
Add me to the ranks of confused-by-the-negative-reviews. I'm sorry, but this is a page-turner, folks. "Not get into it"? This layered story lays bare much, much more than office ennui. This is a novel about inner lives, dreams private and public, and how we, social animals all, connect and disconnect and sometimes connect again. People say the characters are thinly drawn? Dickens-esque in its characterization, I'd say. It's also very funny.

A good book for me is one that you won't forget. I won't forget this one. One of the characters tries to get through a day by quoting lines from The Godfather - that's laugh-out-loud funny. The mix of that level of humor with a topic as serious as cancer is very well done, as is the ending of the book. Anyone that has ever worked in the cube world will like it - you will recognize some of the characters as being like people you have known, only amplified a million times.

The title of the book is taken from Don DeLillo's first novel, Americana, which is (not surprisingly) also an art-house novel about an advertising executive and his wacky, post-modern relationships with his co-workers. It's from the first line: "Then we came to the end of another dull and lurid year."

Ferris strikes me more as a theorist than an artist. Reading this book felt like an intellectual exercise, as though it was written to be an extended literary device, a form of self-satisfying academic experimentation, not a story.

I am sure there are people who enjoy reading books that are constructed as intellectual exercises, but I don't. In my experience, these are the same people who sneer at the very idea of deigning to enjoy a good story. I prefer novels that are about feeling and experience. This one isn't.

At first, I was somewhat hesitant to read a workplace satire. There is a certain pain in watching Office Space that only one in the depths of cubicle hell can really feel in between the humor. But thankfully, I didn't let that prevent me from reading Joshua Ferris's novel once it had been gifted to me. Set during a period of layoffs in an advertising agency, Then We Came to the End shows the humor and the humanity of working in an office with people you'll never really know. My only real complaint is with the number of characters, I ended up mixing some together, which is probably sadly somewhat true to life. Humorous, and also surprisingly somber at times, TWCTHE brings the humanity back to the workplace.

This hilarious back-and-forth chronicle is a must read for anyone that has endured, enjoyed or suffered the corporate working environment. Deep characters beyond stereotypes, compelling writing and thought-provoking anecdotes convert this into an office classic.

I'm puzzled by the mixed reviews that readers seem to give this book. But I'm glad that it has apparently been a commercial success nevertheless, because it deserves to be. Perhaps its workplace setting and the blurbs on the book cover, which emphasize how "hilarious" it is, have led too many to expect the absurdism of "The Office". This book is richer than that TV show. While "The Office" has caricatures of workplace personalities, Ferris manages to create relatable workplace characters - impressively doing so even while using the first person plural "we" narrator throughout most of the book. Highly recommended!

I read this book while working through my last month at a really awful job. The office politics, gossip, downsizing and hilarious attempts at coping with the daily grind by the employees at this fictional ad agency was a salve to my frayed nerves. At least they had each other and at least I had something to read that literally made me laugh out loud on the bus during my commute.

From a literary perspective, I found the language of the book to be really interesting. It isn't often you find a book written from the collective point of view, and for once, I thought the intent of the book matched the technique employed by the author. The collective narration wasn't a gimmick, it actually advanced the point of the novel. I am glad the book received such good reviews, I am a big fan.

Deanna Hurst powers Joshua Ferris' story THEN WE CAME TO THE END, with her firm songwriting and speaking skills adding drama to the story of coworkers fighting for jobs, perks, and survival in a cutthroat business environment.

After hearing how funny this book was, seeing how many awards it had won, I tried to read it several times. Recently I picked it back up (after putting it down months ago) but quickly just gave up again - permanently this time. The long rambling pointless prose style just got to me. Couldn't stand it. It's like listening to that long-winded person everyone has in their office tell what should be a brief story about what they did last night - they drone on and on, sticking in details that don't matter, subreferencing to an extent that would drive Dennis Miller crazy, and won't just get to the point, until you forgot why you even cared and you wish they would just stop so you could get back to work. Yes, there are some very pointed and funny observations in the book, but they are buried within long passages that go nowhere and serve no purpose. I wanted to like this book, can relate to the material (recently lost my job after watching other waves of layoffs) but in the end just couldn't get through it.

I'm about a fifth of the way through this book, and I'm having a really tough time getting through it. Like many of the other reviewers, I was impressed by the praise it was getting and was expecting a quick, entertaining read. Instead, reading it has dragged on for 2 weeks (I actually stopped and read Generation Kill, which is the same size, in 2 days in between). A lot of the negative reviewers have mentioned the Office in comparison, and I think that highlights how poorly the characters are developed in this book. On the Office, Michael is a massive douche 80% of the time, but the other 20% is used humanize him, make him sympathetic, and provide insights on why he is the way he is. As a result, you care about the character, and his bumbling comes off funny and less anger-inducing. That is not the case in this book. So far, I have seen nothing to make any of the characters endearing. As a result, you have the guy that plays asinine pranks, the guy that prattles on about his "buckshelves", and the guy that constantly interrups. They are all hateable, because there's nothing that makes them stand out in any way except for their annoying quirks. I don't think I can finish this one, which bugs me, because I rarely put a book down, and I'm also tempted to find out what this "High school writing" ending is.

Everyday we spend the best part of our energy on the people who work with us. That ad hoc family that surrounds us day after day. The people we know better than some our own family, and yet really don't know at all. The agency is downsizing, restructuring any other term they can find for layoffs. Every day brings the anticipation and dread. Will it be Carl, who has been more and more erratic as of late, or Jim, who always manages to say the most inappropriate thing, Karen who can reduce even the most heartbreaking incident into something to be mocked, Chris who pilfers a coworker's chair, or Marcia the acid tongued? Of course we could all be like Joe, perfect Joe, who is always ready when called upon, never joins in the pranks or gossip or complains about being the target of the group's increasingly childish jokes and seems to have the respect of their boss Lynn. Joe will never make the Spanish walk with his belongings in a box, escorted by security. One of their main topics of speculation on the health of one of the agency's partners, Lynn. As coworkers become more paranoid and spend more time talking than working, the layoffs continue. The more employees try to ferret out the less they actually know about their coworkers and about their eventual fate.

Then We Came to the End is a wickedly funny first novel from Joshua Ferris. He has captured the endless quest of the office worker to fill time without actually working. The gossip, the endless jockeying for recognition, the speculation on what's ahead...the aggression and apathy. This was an entertaining book.

Some really good writing and an interesting premise, but not an appealing read. Is it reading a first person plural narration? Maybe. Or could it be the fact that it's more a vertical story than a horizontal one? I'm not sure. A lot of people like this book, but I wouldn't recommend it.

At the risk of sounding like a snob, I have to think that any reviewers saying this book is boring or bad are just not good readers, or should stick to action packed genre fiction. This is one of the more incredible books I've read in recent years. It's slow-paced but every sentence is delicious...it's incredibly fresh, full of humor and sharp observation about people, work, and life. There are a lot of characters, so if you read it on and off over the course of a couple months, you probably won't feel as engaged with the story...it's a great read if you have time to really plow through it. You'll become incredibly interested in the characters in their glorious weird individuality and you'll become totally engaged in their mundane, gossipy lives. If you stick with it, the book becomes genuinely moving and even truly exciting at its climax. It's incredibly original and such a rewarding read if you have a taste for subtletly, humor, and human observation. If you find yourself bored by it, stick to the da vinci code.

I read 2-3 novels a month, and this one has completely bored me from page one on. Im not sure what he is trying to say, except that we are all stuck in ruts and fear for our careers, and we don't need him to tell us that. Sharing his trivialities of his everyday office life is nothing more than an overblown, unorganized minute by minute journal, written by someone who has nothing better to do then share his day to day boredom with the world for money. I put it down FINALLY at page 74, HOPING...if not BEGGING for it to become organized, thoughtful, and at least slightly entertianing. Needless to say, it was brought to the used book store within a week for exchange.

I can understand the mixed reviews of this book, though I loved every page of it and wished it would never end. To appreciate it, you not only need to have worked in an office, you need to have worked in this KIND of office.

I happened to work in two offices where everyone had their noses in everyone else's business, where people had conniptions over nonsense such as where their "legitimate" chair is located, and whether or not the axe will fall anytime soon. That it is set in the Spring and Summer just prior to 9/11 is no accident; the economy was already starting to tank and 9/11 only made things worse for those teetering on the brink. In this office, people are being fired right and left, but the remaining folks are more worried about the health situation of their boss and the private lives of their co-workers. Who has a crush on whom? Who is a complete whackjob? This is office life, folks, at least in my old office.

This book is so full of quotable lines and great twists that there isn't much I can say without giving it away. People who have worked in my situation will likely love it. People who haven't, or who don't enjoy programs such as The Office because they hit too close to home, will not like it at all.

Joshua Ferris is an excellent writer and this is a stunning debut. I'm very much looking forward to what comes next.

While I have at least one quibble with this book, this is an impressive novel. Through effective timing, language, humor and humanity, the author weaves a tapestry that appears to be the product of a tough balancing act successfully achieved. (Excuse the cliches and almost-mixed metaphors, this book doesn't deserve them.) The use of "we" is somehow brilliant and may account for the different reactions to the book. I suspect that it draws you in unconsciously even as you can never pass it by without being aware of it. I could go on and on about the use of "we" since, simply, Ferris exploits it in all ways effectively, but doesn't get himself trapped by it - which is also very impressive. I can't account for the fact that this book both rings true to experience and is also completely not anything I would in fact say "happened" around me, even as I've worked in offices plenty. That, to me, is perhaps what makes me think it's a very good book - it's about an office and it's about life, it is about dailiness and about humanity, and I really can't see the machine working for the most part. It's risk-taking and well-written in many ways, including the rhythm of the writing and the underlying humanity of its ideas. The quibble I had is rather significant, but I don't know how the author could have fixed it. At some point, I did think that this male author did not write effectively about a female character at the book's turning point, even as the literary risk taken at that point was well worth it. The strength of the novel in other respects, however, more than balances this missing piece. I would add, based on the other reviews, two more things. First, I sort of wish I hadn't so looked forward to "the end" based on other reviews; that may have ruined it a bit for me, since I somehow expected something and maybe didn't go with the flow as much. Second, there were a few points where I did just about laugh out loud, though quietly.

At one point I considered this book to be in the tradition of Jane Austen, rather than the many, many other authors credited with her literary and observational skills. I hope that doesn't put anyone off. The quality of well-written social observation and critique mixed with both dark humor and a forgiving attitude toward us human creatures, with the locale being a common setting where we humans gather and cannot quite escape - as a whole, it reminded me of the social entrapment along with intelligent insight characteristic of that other era's literary observer.

This has to be the worst book I have ever read. I love to read and I work in a cubicle. So this book sounded like it might be good. This book made me want to poke my eyes out. It was so boring and didn't make sense. It jumped from funny little stories to a sad story about cancer. I actually threw this book in the trash. I have never done that before. It took forever to read because it did not grab my attention. I forced myself to stick with it but I couldn't even finish it. I think I had one or two chapters left.

This book made a big splash when it came out, and it's easy to see why. A tour-de-force written in the first-person-plural, it's remarkable in that it sustains the tone and humor of satire for the length of an entire novel.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. There's a diversion about halfway through in which the "we" voice takes a break. Still, the feat is remarkable.

Beyond stylistic interest, the book is highly readable, with plenty of sharp and entertaining observations about how we behave at work. It's sort of like the TV show The Office, but in text, so it necessarily has some more emotional depth.

But, frankly, not a whole lot more. This is a book that's fun to read, but doesn't have a lot of staying power.

Well written, well done, but not much to it.

Ferris explores the workplace in the context of an economic downturn. Petty office politics, ingenious ways to waste time, quirky characters, and incestuous relationships are the order of the day. To great effect, Ferris tells this story in the rarely-used first-person plural voice. Parts of this book are funny and other parts are touching, and I was thoroughly entertained for about 100 pages. Eventually, the first-person plural becomes somewhat tedious, the workplace setting runs out of interest, and I was ready for the book to end.

Do not waste your time or your money. The characters have no character and garner no emotional attachment. I did not care if they lived or died. The conversations are cumbersome, repetitive and witless. The content is vacuous, shallow and lacking.

Some reviews have said that if you liked "the Office" then you would like this book. I loved "The Office" - it is comedy genius. This book does not deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph, let alone sentence as "The Office".

I genuinely do not believe that I have ever read a worse book than this - I only finished it out of a bloody-minded determination and a belief that it must improve. Sadly it never did but thankfully it did come to an end.

Is Joshua Ferris a terrible writer? Of course not. Are the people who loved this book insane? Far from it! And not only do I heartily admire Mr. Ferris for completing a novel and getting it published - something I probably will never achieve for myself - I also respect anyone who could finish this book and find an inspiring message within. Reviews are subjective, and all I can say is that I really tried to like this book, but after reading page after page, word after word, my will to live slowly drained from my body, and my inner voice screamed, "Just Give Up Already!" But I didn't give up. But I didn't enjoy it either. I kept waiting for the agony to lessen and the uplifting experience to begin. You know it's bad (or should I say, WE know it's bad) when there's only 30 pages to go, and we still have to force ourselves to pick it up. Inside joke there! See I was paying attention. So my advice to anyone who's made it halfway through this book and loves it, is to keep going because you'll probably love it even more. But if you get to the halfway point and start debating whether to finish the whole thing, or to move on - MOVE ON! Really. Cause if you don't like it by page 190, you won't like it by page 385. Things I didn't like: The characters were so forgettable, that I think even the author had trouble keeping them straight, which may explain why he kept referring to them by their first and last names, even in dialogue. Even though none of the (numerous) characters shared a first name. I thought that was completely unrealistic. Whoever refers to their co-workers by first and last name in speech? "Oh Martha Jeffers, could you go ask Chris McDonald over there if he has the reports for Fergus Magnusson?" One particular character was called Jim Jackers, and I confess to alleviate the tedium I silently referred to him as Jim J****ss - you know like the MTV inspired movie. Now THAT made me laugh! And there was not much written about their lives outside the office. So I didn't really feel like I had a handle on the characters. Also towards the last quarter of the novel, something happens which I thought was interesting, but then turned out to be more of a red herring. By the very end, when the author talks about what's happened to some of the characters, I knew that had I connected with them, I would have found it moving, but I really didn't care. Kind of like when you go to see a movie and the soundtrack swells up when it wants the audience to cry, but instead you think it's a good time to go get popcorn. How ironic that the title of the book is Then We Came To The End, because I honestly thought I'd never reach the end! The more I read, the further away the ending seemed to get. Like in Poltergeist when the mother is running desperately towards the door, but the faster she runs, the further away the door got. I know this review is long, rambling, unfair and biased. Let me repeat - a lot of people will find much to admire about this book and rightly so. But there are people like me who wish that they could just step into a time machine and put the book back on the shelf and walk away.

Three months ago, I was browsing around in the library and came across the hardcover copy of this book. I've always enjoyed books about office life (i.e. Company, by Max Barry and Kings of Infinite Space, by James Hynes), so I grabbed it.

Within minutes of reading this book, I went insane with all the "we" references. I tried to like it...I really tried, but couldn't, and then scrapped it.

Now, I see the same book in Barnes and Noble (only this time in paperback with a different cover) read the description again, and now I've got the same book again, only I don't know it.

So I'm reading the crazy thing thinking it sounds familiar, and finally I realize what an idiot I am...and blah blah, but anyway...

I actually enjoyed the book this time. It wasn't great by any means... it was a tad long (but come on, my attention span isn't what it used to be). I really enjoyed reading little snippets about the lives of characters, and there was really a lot I could relate with.

If you're interested in all this freakishly overdone office crap like I am, you'll probably enjoy the book on some level.

I mean, how can you not love some pissed-off office worker dressed like a clown, blasting people with red paint pellets to make 'em think the end is near?

I will be the first to say that in the beginning of reading this novel, I was incredibly disappointed. I could not, for the life of me, understand why this book had received such incredible praise. However, around 250 pages in, the story has a dramatic change of focus and some brilliant character development rises to the surface. Additionally, as others have said, the last 20 pages are truly unique and show a literary insight that surpasses that which I would have originally credited the author.

To the negative reviewers who all admit to not finishing the book, your review really does present an unfair bias. Though it is problematic that it takes the book so long to get started, which is why I did not give it five stars, it is a great read.

If you like the show, "The Office", you will probably enjoy this book. The petty day to day ins and outs of office drudgeries, pranks, personality quirks and irksome characters makes this a book anyone who has a job can appreciate. Although it was not a book that I was rushing to get back to, I certainly laughed out loud at several points. I read this for a book club, and overall, the group rated the book a 6/10. One woman hated it, one loved it, and the rest thought it was OK/good. Most of us liked best the middle passage in the book where there narrator changes, telling the story from the perspective of Lynn. That part had more of a fiction/novel feel to it, and is more serious. The rest of the book is mainly a string of loosely woven anecdotes about the employees and their idiosyncrasies.

For those of you looking for a quick recommendation, I can say that this is the best book that I've read this year. It was funny but sad, outlandish but true, and I fell head over heels in love with it.

Ferris's novel is set in the fairly mundane setting of an office workplace, but the story extends far beyond this. It focuses on a group of individuals toiling away in a failing company, and examines the relationships that develop not just between these people with each other, but also with their jobs. It's told primarily from the first person perspective ("we"), but I didn't find this style gimmicky or difficult to deal with at all - in fact, I felt it really served the authors purpose of showing that these people were all in it together, for better or for worse, essentially an extended family for each other. Or maybe it also represents the corporate drone mentality that can easily strip away one's identity... take it as you will. Regardless, given this point of view, Ferris does a great job of really developing his characters in believable and compassionate way.

I've read several reviews claiming that this book is not funny. I guess it depends on your sense of humor. If you are looking for ribald, slap-stick humor in book format, then you probably will not find this book enjoyable. If you prefer a darker, wry humor, such as that seen in the movie "Office Space" or the television show "The Office", then you will probably find the humor in this novel as well. You need the ability to see the potential for humor in mundane and often futile situations. Comparisons between it and "Catch-22" are, I think, very apt as well. It won't be to everyone's taste, but for those who can appreciate that the lines between laughter and tears can often be very blurry indeed, then I think this book will be a worthwhile read. I found it both funny and touching, and consequently immensely rewarding. I look forward eagerly to Ferris's next book.

Not your typical novel, Joshua Ferris' debut, "And Then We Came to an End," places the reader right in the middle of a group of somewhat wacky employees at a failing advertising industry. By narrating the story from the viewpoint of the first person "we" it's almost as if we're viewing things from the eyes of an anonymous co-worker, but we learn in the author's interview at the end of the book that he's using "we" in a collective sense. The book really consists of a number of vignettes describing scenes between co-workers who, like many of us, seem to have alot of time on their hands to avoid doing their jobs. The angst of employees at a failing company is well described, as are the travails of the various characters. The book is also quite funny at times (a bit reminiscent of "The Office"). Ferris makes an interesting choice by placing a chapter in the middle centered on the hard-working boss - Lynn Martin - and her denial of the disease she's suffering from.

A strong first effort, and an author I'm definitely going to follow. I'm interested in whether he tries to write a more conventional linear novel next.

I liked this book. The first person plural was effective, not annoying, and disturbing in retrospect. The characters were real and yet not stereotypical. There were a few humorous parts. That said, I found this to be a very "male" book with little perspective of a woman's struggles in the workplace - even with Lyne's "interlude." Not that Ferris is under any obligation to tap into the female office psyche, of course. Just that I would have found the novel more enjoyable, I think. It was a bit dry. Some people already being driven insane by corporate culture might want to avoid it until they retire. Too close to home and all that.

When we finished reading this terrifically funny debut novel, we thought about our co-workers at Metal Center News and McWilliams-Watermark and INS Advertising. We thought about the people's whose apartments we cleaned and the actors we acted with, and we wondered how they were doing right now and if they were happy and if they looked anything like what they looked like back then.

We laughed a whole lot in a "Catch-22" kind of way when we read this book and we were also surprised how serious and sentimental it was. But we also think that the publisher went a little too far with the bright yellow cover and the little cartoon characters. It's not a sitcom, we thought. It's literature!

One more thing, just between us: what's the last line mean, anyway?

Love the first-person plural. Love the microscope-eye view of office living, written with honesty and wit. Love the strong characterization, the whacky plot, the setting which by its very banality is sublime. The book is strongest when it's relating the way the office's boss spends the night before she's slated to go under the knife. So naked, so raw, so powerful, so true. I just love it!

Joshua Ferris' acclaimed debut novel depicts a fading millennial Chicago advertising agency. The first-person narrator is an anonymous employee who seems to express the collective thoughts of the group while walking the reader around the office and sharing stories. Ferris populates this fictional agency with a richly drawn cast of employees. The accounts of office minutia are usually hilarious and realistic (one employee tries to pass an entire day without touching his computer keyboard) but occasionally neither (the tiresome discussion of office chair switches). The team faces the constant threat of layoffs (they call it "walking Spanish") during the post-Internet bubble advertising slump. Agency owner Lynn's struggle with breast cancer is a key theme of the novel. A segment of the book abruptly shifts from the office to a third person omniscient view of Lynn that, while dignified, disrupts the flow of this fictional work. This strong modern novel is recommended: I read this a few months ago and it still occasionally is in my thoughts.

I enjoyed this black comedy of cubicle life. The first part entranced me with its dry humor and spot-on depiction of the lives of corporate drones. The middle section was darker -- an more searching exploration of the psyche of those who confuse their work with their lives -- or more accurately have no lives. Then the jocular tone returns for the final section.
The author is very skillful in the way he gradually brings the various characters to life, although they do remain someone opaque. We get to know them in a similar way to the way we get to know our own work colleagues. We see their little tics and peculiarities but we only see part of them -- the work part. The rest remains unknowable to us.
This book has been compared to "Catch 22." I don't think it's quite up to that level, simply because the subject matter -- the folly of war versus the folly of office life -- can't be compared.
Having said this, this is a fun read -- a little sad, a little funny, a little disturbing.

For more on me and my book The Nazi Hunter: A Novel go to www.alanelsner.com

NOT what i expected, not funny, not interesting..not really anything!!
the gossip isnt even funny...not even worth a long review....

I was intrigued by Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End when I read the NY Times review of it. However, I was a little wary of the first person plural conceit of the telling. Would it be too cutesy? Would it just be a novel whose sole highlight is the unusual point of view? Having read it, I can honestly say the book lives up to the hype. The story takes place in a Chicago ad agency during the summer of 2001. The "we" who narrates the story is everybody--the people in the office. You know them. You may be one of them. Many of us have been in workplaces where there was this collective sense of self, where people talked amongst themselves so frequently that you couldn't always remember where you heard a particular bit of news, you just knew it by osmosis, and where although you felt part of a large "we" that had no real secrets you still had no clue as to the inner lives of your co-workers. Honestly, the first person plural is the only way this book could have been written--it wouldn't have worked any other way. Ferris is enormously talented and lets this point of view work for him. Then We Came to the End is funny and true to life, and it has one of the most satisfying final lines of any novel in recent memory. I've been recommending it to everybody.

Then We Came to the End is author Joshua Ferris' first novel. It takes place in a Chicago advertising agency during a year of layoffs. Written mostly in the first person plural, it is a darkly comic look at office life and the inter-personal politics of privileged office workers. I found it to be reminiscent of Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, with its rich humor and underlying sense of foreboding. The writing is often lyrical, with long languorous sentences describing life in a cube farm, like an urban version of Garrison Keillor.

The characters are clearly drawn and, with one deliberate exception, believable. They might or might not remind you of people you have worked with, but they are certainly plausible office-mates. You get to know them well enough that you have sympathy with them, even with the obnoxious[...] (and there are a couple of those).

This is a very entertaining book.

Ferris' use of a plural first-person narrative voice in this book about the daily struggles of mid-level advertising executives isn't the royal we. Instead, it's the degrading corporate we that took over America in the 1990s in an attempt to get ever more work from the individual by convincing him he was part of something larger than himself (like a team or even a crusade). If that's all there was, however, this book would simply be sad -- a jumbled collection of post-9/11 Dilbert-esque anecdotes. Instead, it's a hilarious (and sometimes introspective) rant against the powers that be, along with the belated discovery that most Americans are too afraid to escape the rat-race and live as the unique, beautiful, creative individuals they believe themselves to be. After all, it's always safer to be a rat.

If one could call Joshua Ferris' debut novel Then We Came To The End a blockbuster for the book world, that would be the one word to fit the profile of the novel. He had the invisible ally of reality on his side to tackle a real-life portrayal of an everyday office experienced by a majority of his audience. Ferris' use of the grueling workdays work in his favor as he displays them with humor and reality.
Similar to the TV show "The Office," Ferris' novel mirrors the idea of showing a funny aspect of menial chores to be done in an office. His unique writing style incorportes humor with a quality which I cannot seem to identify. The novel starts of slowly and uses the humor simply to retain it's essence. This, may be, the one drawback to Ferris' novel. The slowness of the novel takes away from the humor because it takes so long for the jokes to progress. Although the humor was few and far between, when it was used it did exude laugh out loud laughter, however it was the sparsity of the jokes that lost hilarity. For instance a large part of the first half of the novel is spent showing employees' reactions to being fired one man decided to cut up his clothes. Another decided to take another man (the firee)'s "buckshelves" [bookshelves] and when reiterating the story to his peers he expressed his fear of "the man" and with Ferris' use of hyperboles he could successfully show how "the man" controlled the office.
Though a little rough around the edges the incorporation of humor took away the edge to exude a novel which can enjoyed by many.

I could not stick with this book because 1. it was not funny 2. it was fairly bad prose, no discipline or craft at all 3.the author did not make me care about the characters in any way.

Do not be misled by the many positive reviews. The critics sometimes go overboard for some mediocre piece of fiction, and I think this is the case here.

Author Joshua Ferris spent three years working for a national advertising company, and he uses it to good effect describing office discord in THEN WE CAME TO THE END. Copy editors and art designers are referred to as "creatives"; working on an ad campaign that has been ruined by client interference is called "polishing the turd." A campaign for caffeinated water is lampooned.

The creatives working at this fictitious advertising agency are bored stiff, despite the sword of Damocles hanging over their collective heads. The agency is in financial trouble, and layoffs are pending. They spend most of their time slinging bull and rumor-mongering in Benny Shassburger's office. One of them can't believe it's "only 3:15."

Although none of them are fully developed, you will recognize most of these people. Joe Pope, about the only one of these people who takes his job seriously, is widely disliked and even bullied. He has received two promotions, and as a senior copy writer, is their boss. Two of them are working on novels and screen plays. Carl Garbedian seems to be going crazy. At one point he does a circuit of the office in the nude. He's depressed because his wife is a doctor, and he feels he's throwing his life away doing what he does. Tom Mota is among the first to be laid off and rumors spread about his seeking revenge. His e-mails to former colleagues don't help.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END will remind you a whole lot of CATCH-22 author Joseph Heller's SOMETHING HAPPENED. At midpoint in SOMETHING HAPPENED the protagonist's son grew ill. In Ferris's novel it's the boss, Lynn Martin, who is sick. Rumor has it that she's got breast cancer and that an operation is imminent. For most of the novel Ferris uses the first person plural "we." In order to get inside the head of Lynn Mason, he switches to third person "she". What was mostly farce, now becomes pathos, as this stalwart woman now becomes vulnerable. The other dramatic scene involves an office shooting with a twist that you won't see coming.

Despite its similarity to SOMETHING HAPPENED, Ferris's effort is fresh and thought-provoking (It was on the short list for the National Book Award.) It also includes an author question and answer session and a list a questions you can use to stimulate your book club.

I could NOT read this dull, unfunny book. I got through the first 10 pages without so much as a smile, giggle, titter - it was about as funny as a rubber crutch. Thank goodness I got it at the library. Please tell me again, HOW did this book get published??????????

We sat down to read this work with remarkable gusto. Although some of us were hesitant, we rather enjoyed the gossip-like tone of the text. And all those fascinating details on breast cancer and a child's funeral and which schmo was having fun with which co-worker after hours. This ad agency sure looked like the happening place to be. But it wasn't.

Parody aside, this read was tedious. Although I can admire the use of the first person plural, it gets tired by page 250. To think that it goes on for another 150 pages really made me tired. The problem with this book is it ends up coming off as a gimmick, or maybe an excercise in creative writing. If you are looking for an involved story, you won't find that here. The characters all have a real feel to them, in the way they dress, and talk, but you never get to know any of them. And that is one of the major problems here.

This writer has talent. There's also alot of buzz ,good energy and smart, substantive sentences at work here. (That's why I gave it three stars). I just felt that it was one long exercise in proving something. What, I am not so sure. What does gripe me is the over-the-top praise. In the inside cover there are several pages of accolades from other writers, reviewers, etc. And while I am usually keen on these things, I fell for it. And I bought the book. Sorry I did.

I say: skip this one, and check out the entertaining,dry-witted SIM0N LAZARUS, a huge contrast to this, (powerful story) it's a relatively unknown gem. And shouldn't be.

This is a very different story than say, The Virgin Suicides, where 1st person plural was the best way to tell the story. The "we" Point of View made the characters and story weak--I never cared about anyone except for Lynn Mason, and that was because we got a break from "we" with her chapter (BTW, why was that inserted in the middle? Felt forced to me, not at all organic). There were some funny and recognizable parts, and the author pulls of the craft of using "we" (switching between omniscient to closer third person and out again) and is a competent writer. I wanted to be moved by this book in some way but I'm sorry I wasn't.

Those discerning readers who have given this book one star (and one star only because you can't give it zero stars) have provided sufficient insights and critiques of this poorly written (how could anyone have spent 5 -- count 'em -- 5 years on this?) novel? Since one character could not be distinguished from another, I suggest that any future editions include a page with names and stick figures representing the characters so some semblance of recognition of who is who can occur (not that the reader cares about this or anything else the author has to say after about the first 20 pages). And the last line, as another reviewer has noted, truly is something that a high school C student would use to end a short story. However, my main criticism is that the author appears to have never stepped foot in Chicago. People who work in North Michigan Avenue companies are not drawn from the south side of the city nor the far south suburbs. There are no teeming crowds of workers ala 1960s New York flooding the streets at lunch time. Whatever city and citizens he's describing are not Chicago and its people. Lastly, the totem pole. Just about everyone knows that the Plains Indians did NOT make totem poles. Didn't the author have anyone read the proofs who knew this. Did the author think that Tlingit Indians had come down from the Northwest Coast and set up shop in Nebraska? As with other fiction books that have recently received rave reviews from (previously thought) credible critics, who are these reviewers who think books like this are even readable, much less "possibly the next Great American novel"?