Read: Then We Came to the End
Another book read, another review just sitting in Edit Posts section with the big fat word ‘Draft’ attached to it for the longest time.
I finished reading Then We Came To The End last weekend. It was a book I’d been wanting to read for quite a while now. And it started out pretty great. I especially liked Ferris’ use of ‘we’, as if I, the reader, was part of the group of colleagues working at the ad agency. It was original, it was kind of amusing, and Ferris manages to nail office life right on the head. It’s a difficult time for the agency, with retrenchments everywhere, and here, I felt is where Ferris made it work the most.
“Names – just names to anyone else, but to us, they were the individuals who generated our greatest sympathy. The ones who put their things in a box, shook a few hands, and left without complaint. They had no choice in the matter, and they possessed a quiet resignation to their ill-timed fates. As they departed, it almost felt to us like self-sacrifice. They left, so that we might stay. And stay we did, though our hearts went out to them.”
But there was all that endless chitchat. Parts of which were fun, but which got a little tiring. And there was this niggling voice at the back of my head that wondered, should I continue? Should I stop? Should I give it another chance? Why bother?
A constant flip-flopping, as you can see. While the premise was interesting, I couldn’t bear to read through crazed former co-workers’ emails and merrily skipped my way through some other parts that didn’t quite catch my attention.
And then, just before the 200 page mark (yeah I did give it a lot of chances), the story focused on Lynn, the boss who is struggling with cancer. It focused on her life, her hopes, her not-quite relationship. It was inspired, it was heartfelt, it seemed the only few pages that were real. And that made me pause, perhaps this might be a decent read after all?
Then we cut back to the office banter and I’m disappointed again. I keep reading, perhaps looking, waiting for another section just like that, or perhaps a continuation of that story. But there is none.
This review is kind of all over the place I know. So let me try to sum this up the best I can: It’s decent. I can see why people might enjoy reading it. Ferris is undeniably an interesting writer (I add that also because I’ve read good reviews of his second book , The Unnamed, which sounds a bit more up my alley). But this book was not for me. I wanted to like it – and for those few pages, actually did – but was in the end rather disappointed. Having said that though, this was Ferris’ first book. And I’m still interested in reading The Unnamed
Books about work life interest me, and this sounds like something I’d like to try reading despite what seems like an excess of the chit-chat.
I hope you fare better with it than I did!
Critics loved this book (and so did I), but I haven’t met many others who liked it as much as I did. I actually found the endless chit-chat endlessly fascinating and amusing.
Oddly enough, the style of The Unnamed is a much more traditional but the critics haven’t like it as much as his first. I don’t normally agree with critics but in this case I do. I like The Unnamed a lot, but I loved Then We Came to the End.