#5 Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris’s impressive debut novel is set in a Chicago advertising agency at the beginning of the decade. The agency and its employees are starting to feel the pinch after the dotcom bust and are reeling from the looming specter of impending layoffs after the economically flush years during the nineties.

Ferris brilliantly uses the collective “we” of corporate speak as his narrative device and in the course of the novel both reinforces the truths and dismantles the myths of the collective “we” that inhabits any office. The way the narrative is structured, we the reader are part of the office “we” and are a voyeuristic participant in the gossip, goofing off, meetings, deadlines and after work happy hours.

“Then We Came To The End” encapsulates the surreal microcosm of office life. The office gossip that must be broken down in excruciating detail, the daily rituals that can’t be deviated from, the ingenious time wasters and ways to avoid doing work, the territoriality and unspoken hierarchy, the in-jokes and gallows humor, all of which is seemingly paramount to those caught up in it, but meaningless to someone on the outside.

It is that irksome outside world intruding on the hermetically sealed unreality of office life that gives the novel its emotional heft and perspective. We don’t operate in a vacuum, and illness, family tragedy, divorce and a changing corporate landscape all find a way to seep in. It’s a testament to the novel that none of the characters and situations go the predictable way that they may seem to be moving towards. Nobody is a stock character or stereotype and in the course of the novel all the main characters end up showing multiple sides of themselves.

Like any good office story, we get it in bits and pieces and from many different sources. Sometimes the pieces form a whole and other times there’s no way to get the whole story. People leave and take their details with them. That is part of the underlying theme of “Then We Came To End”. All of the team building and camaraderie and surrogate family are an illusion that ends when the elevator doors close on a laid off co-worker and their sad cardboard box full of personal belongings. They then just become an empty cubicle whose occupant you can’t quite remember the name of.

“Then We Came To The End” perfectly summarizes modern corporate culture and the fact that nobody is going to retire with a gold watch after working 30 years for the same company anymore. Nothing is guaranteed and those experiences and people that seemed so constant at the time are ephemeral.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’ll appreciate this book. It’s funny, poignant, tragic, and says something compelling about the world we live in like all the best books do. I ripped through it in a day and half if that helps sell you on it.