THEN WE CAME TO THE END by Joshua Ferris

This was the last book in my Fall Reading Challenge which I am two months late in completing. That is one reason I don't usually do "Challenges."

Then We Came To The End took me through an on-again off-again rollercoaster about whether I should give up on the book or continue. Everytime I thought I would end it, I thought I just had to see what WAS at the end. It isn't that it isn't well-written. It is. In a detailed commentary the author takes us through the hours of the office workday. I kept getting distracted and then had to pick up the thread of the story again. This certainly was not the fault of the author.

The end result is that I greatly enjoyed this book. I even looked back into it to re-read sections for further clarification. I could easily read it again. This is a book that I would not mind owning rather than borrowing from the library. This is Joshua Ferris's first novel. I like to read first novels - they hold such promise for good things to come.

Kookiejar at A Fraternity of Dreamers read this and put it on her best new novel list for last year. She said it was "touching, funny and quirky." Kookiejar has recommended some good books that I have enjoyed.

If you enjoy the television show "The Office" you will surely enjoy this brilliant book.


A little blurb from the book flap:

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.

I hope you put this on your reading list. You won't regret it.

P.S. Check out the author's website -- it is very entertaining.