Book Review: "Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris

I can’t dislike a novel with this first sentence: “We were fractious and overpaid.” I can’t ignore a theme that seems ripped right from my own experience. Did Mr. Ferris follow me around in 2001 and watch my youthful tech entitlement fall disillusioned around me as the economy floundered and the world changed forever? Or–I hope this is closer to reality–is my experience part of a broader sadness that can be captured perfectly in a riotous novel written, to capture our togetherness on this sinking ship, in the first person plural?

Ferris captures the churlish, back-biting and smug hubris of the late 90s boom perfectly. Office workers aren’t just the obvious constructs of water-cooler herds signing TPS reports, but those who think they’re different and invincible: spurting forced absurdity and juvenile cleverness in that assertive way that means “nothing could possibly go wrong.” Of course it did go wrong and we all got numbed, lonely and old very fast.

What Ferris does here that other satirical novels do not is spotlight the panicky futility that crept up on us very quickly. His characters aren’t whimsical pastiches of quirks (although they are certainly quirky in ways that you’d both expect and not expect), but deeply faulted, tormented individuals. Office politics take on the ominous feeling of life-or-death struggles. In some ways they are; characters spin dark fantasies about how when they get laid off they’ll slowly lose all of their possessions, their family, their dignity until they are forgotten, desitute.

In between anecdotes about clicking and dragging and billable hours, Ferris gives us glimpses of the dark underbelly of the American professional psyche. It’s terrifying and hilarious.