Then We Came to the End
In his first novel, set in the offices of a Chicago ad firm, Ferris synthesizes an entire office culture out of thin air, complete with running gags and stolen desk chairs and illicit affairs and secret angst, and then tears it apart before our eyes as the firm slowly goes to pieces. In a dizzying stylistic stunt, he narrates its decline and fall in the first-person plural — “we” tell the story — so that the entire staff serves as its own Greek chorus. As funny as The Office, as sad as an abandoned stapler, Then We Came to the Endis that rare novel that feels absolutely contemporary, and that rare comedy that feels blisteringly urgent.
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