The End
Joshua Ferris’ novel, Then We Came To The End, is one of the books that took me the longest to finish; not because it was boring but because I did not want it to end yet. Also, as I have realized, I tend to pick up books based on what I am currently experiencing and Ferris’ book was the story of my life: getting laid off/shitcanned, office politics, and the stuff happening between office cubicles were (sadly) something I could relate to.
I loved everything in that book because it was honest. I also loved the way it was written – in first person plural. I also loved how it brought out life in an advertising agency that it made me almost want to go back. It felt real in so much so that the characters didn’t look like they were blown out of proportion. Each and everyone’s backgrounds were, I suppose, neatly laid out to make it feel like a real office setting with real characters and real problems and real, real, reality.
It was hilarious, to begin with. Hilarious, in the sense that though it was poking fun at the situations and the people who played in it, it wasn’t looking down upon their lives. It wasn’t trying to be one of those novels where, in order for it to be funny, someone had to take a hit. No, it wasn’t any of that, it was very straightforward with crazy dashes of genius.
Now that the book has come to its end I could move out of my rut just as the characters have. Like them, I had been laid off and it’s time to find another job to bitch about. And as much as all of this – this so-called tribulation – has put a damper on my spirits, I am going to take it positively. I am learning my lesson pretty well and I’m just glad it’s happening now than later in life where things will probably be more at risk. We all have to fail, in one way or another, to know what will work to make it to success.
So…yeah.
Uh, read a review of the book here?
*sheepishgrin*
