REVIEW: Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Then We Came to the End is like a single-cam sitcom which records the smallest details of the interactions between the staff of an advertising agency. The narrator is first person plural. The book spends its first 150 pages or so reading like a literary version of an episode of NBC's "The Office."


I am not an "Office" fan.


I labored through that first section, which was in turn humorous, tedious, amusing, and predictable. Several times I started to put it down, but on principle I hate not finishing books. I came to a break in the storyline to find a middle section which is almost a novella, told from a third person limited perspective. It was enough to renew my interest in the character and pique my curiosity about her future. The last section and the epilogue return to the first person plural almost stream-of-consciousness type narration, with a few extreme plot twists thrown in for excitement.


This is an entertaining book, but not one that requires a lot of brain power. It's fun, rambling, with a few great pieces of characterization and a lot of fascinating detail. Detail that ultimately overwhelms the story itself.





View all my reviews.