Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

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.

I felt compelled to write a brief review of this book having seen one who hated it. I read it a while ago and don't have it on hand at the moment but I do remember the basic plot and I thought it was great and inventive way to depict our modern cubicle lives and it really captured the anomie the pervades office jobs were we are cogs in the great machine, plus it is funny as hell. Give it a try & you won't regret it!

I truly wanted to like this more than I did. After reading some positive reviews, I was fully prepared to like it. It had the feel of a blind date for me; several friends swore to me I'd just love it! They sold me on our commonalities (it takes place in an office with catty co-workers, and hey YOU work in an office with no shortage of catty co-workers!). Smart without being pretentious, they told me. Very popular and highly thought of, they added.

First impressions were good. There was some good conversation and laughter. This one's quirky, I thought to myself. I could see myself spending some time with this one! But what seemed so promising in the beginning turned dull. I lost interest in the conversation....I found myself disappointed by the shallowness, the talk of all the meetings in offices that eventually reeked with sameness. By the time the characters showed some believable development, I was too bored to care.

It wasn't horrible, mind you. There was the occasional witty dialogue. A well-placed word or two. I may actually give the author another chance. But in the end with this one, I was indifferent.

Soo. I read this as part of the 2015 challenge that compelled me to read an author I knew nothing about - and also because I got a great price due to a promotion by Little Brown and company. The story was interesting - an advertising agency that is falling apart in 99 or so - and portrays life in an office in an accurate, albeit sad, way.
The thing is that it was a bit irregular for me: there were parts I really loved, in which characters seemed to become people I almost could say hi to by the coffee machine. And there were others during which I just sneered at them and felt like saying “grow up already”. All in all, if it was his first book, it may be promising. I haven't checked.

Life in the office, when things are good and as things grow worse. The stories pour out from the collective voices of the office personnel, dark, light, deep, insignificant, but always out of control. Never feels soap opera-ish, despite the growing despair of the staff facing layoffs and benefit cuts.