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While putting this post together, I realized that the original song this is based on, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” needs very little amending to become horrific: why is someone gifting their lover so many different kinds of birds? That can’t be safe? But we love notching the horror up whenever we can, so in our version of the song...
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Then We Came to the End

by Joshua Ferris
Then We Came to the End

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780316016391
ISBN10: 031601639X
Condition: Standard


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Awards

The Rooster 2008 Morning News Tournament of Books Nominee

2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
National Book Award Finalist


Synopses & Reviews

Review

"Hilarious in a Catch-22 way, but with an undercurrent of sadness that works counterpoint to all the hilarity." Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

Review

"The Office meets Kafka. It's Seinfeld rewritten by Donald Barthelme. It's Office Space reimagined by Nicholson....[U]nderneath the politicking and the sackings and the petty jealousies you can hear something else: the sound of our lives (that collective pronoun again) ticking away." Nick Hornby, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

Review

"Ferris' writing displays a strong descriptive flair, but the greatest asset of Then We Came to the End is the nuance of its narrative voice, which has the gossipy warmth and seeming closeness of a conspiratorial co-worker leaning over a partition to impart the latest rumor." Chicago Tribune

Review

"[W]hat looks at first glance like a sweet-tempered satire of workplace culture is revealed upon closer inspection to be a very serious novel about, well, America. It may even be, in its own modest way, a great American novel." Los Angeles Times

Review

"Joshua Ferris' brilliant and incredibly funny debut novel...lays bare the strange interconnectedness of human cogs in the corporate machine." Newsday

Review

"Then We Came to the End is that rare novel that feels absolutely contemporary, and that rare comedy that feels blisteringly urgent." Time

Review

"With so many books on office life, it's nice to see someone add fresh spark and originality to the subject. Nick Hornby praised this as 'a terrific first novel,' foreshadowing a positive public reception." Library Journal

Review

"This debut novel about life in a Chicago advertising agency succeeds as both a wickedly incisive satire of office groupthink and a surprisingly moving meditation on mortality and the ties that band." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"[A] very funny debut novel....Set at a Chicago ad agency at the turn of the century, Ferris's novel is for anyone who chuckles over Dilbert, can recite lines from Office Space, or has an appointment on Thursday nights with The Office. Then We Came to the End is a vicious sendup of cubicle culture that somehow manages not to lose sight of its characters' humanity." Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor (read the entire CSM review)

Synopsis

No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.
With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week."

Synopsis

This wickedly funny, big-hearted novel about life in the office signals the arrival of a gloriously talented writer.

The characters in Then We Came to the End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining work.

Synopsis

Winner of the Hemingway Foundation / PEN Award, this debut novel is "as funny as The Office, as sad as an abandoned stapler . . . that rare comedy that feels blisteringly urgent." (TIME)

No one knows us in quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the Chicago ad agency depicted in Joshua Ferris's exuberantly acclaimed first novel is family at its best and worst, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.

With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells an emotionally true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.

One of the Best Books of the Year
Boston Globe * Christian Science Monitor * New York Magazine * New York Times Book Review * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * Time magazine * Salon

Synopsis

Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is a family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.

5 4

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (4 comments)

`
Deborah Fochler , February 12, 2010 (view all comments by Deborah Fochler)
This is one of the books, I almost didnt read but so thankful I did. A friend of mine was reading it in the doctors office and literally laughing out loud. People were looking and I was getting a little embarrassed. After a couple of minutes a lady asked her about the book and she related that she lost her job and her husband gave her the book to help her find the "humor' in it. He's a firm believer in there's humor in every situation - not so sure I agree but... When she finished the book she passed it to me. Now, I get it - do not read unless you're in a place to laugh out loud. You can not help it. This book is hysterical. Yet, the subject is no laughing matter. Put people in a situation they cant control, that their lives and way of living depends on and not tell them what is going on - you will get absurdity and craziness. This book is insightful and just a delight. I am so glad my friend embarrassed me.

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`
DeniseB , February 05, 2010 (view all comments by DeniseB)
So funny I was laughing out loud! Highly relatable, most of these things have happened to you or you know exactly what he is talking about. The ending is more serious but very good. Serial numbers on chairs - hilarious! A great pick-me-up book!

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`
C from KC , January 19, 2010
I've been hoping to find an insightful story about the sometime ridiculous, the sometime discouraging and the (surprisingly) frequent joy of the modern corprorate workplace. No matter how we feel about corporate life(and it is too complicated and encompassing to feel just one way about it) many of us spend much of our life in the midst of it. Joshua Ferris has done a fantastic job of capturing today's corporate culture, where the characters struggle to maintain their dignity in the middle of downturns and the chaotic fallout of those downturns. Characters resonate with authenticity and the situations vary between conjuring feelings of dread and prompting a knowing head nod and a mumbled "you go.." bit of encouragement. And best of all Ferris' book shows us that in some cases, as in real life, there are some who realize it is beter to care more about one another than our goofy jobs.

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`
Hunter , January 12, 2010
In September 2008, when I saw news film of the Lehman Brothers employees gathering to learn their fate, I thought, "It's just like the novel! It's happening again!" "The novel" being "Then We Came to the End," and "it" being the collapse of the fantasy of secure employment in a nebulous enterprise. But of course "it" had already happened before and I had already recognized my workaday world in many other parts of this excellent book. There are other books I have loved in the past ten years, but none that have hit closer to home.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780316016391
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
02/26/2008
Publisher:
HACHETTE BOOK GROUP
Pages:
416
Height:
1.10IN
Width:
5.49IN
Thickness:
1.25
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2008
UPC Code:
2800316016393
Author:
Joshua Ferris
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Clerks
Subject:
Chicago (Ill.)
Subject:
Illinois
Subject:
Clerks - Illinois - Chicago

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List Price:$17.99
Used Trade Paperback
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