Book Review – “Then We Came to the End”

Working for an early-stage company and having two young children tends to leave very little time for leisurely pursuits. My “pleasure reading” usually consists of stolen moments after everyone has gone to bed during the occasional vacation, and usually focuses on business books rather than any work of fiction.

All of which would have seemed to conspire against me reading “Then We Came to the End,” the 385-page debut effort of author Joshua Ferris. Yet, Ferris’ unique narrative style and character development made this an incredibly fast, enjoyable read that I would highly recommend.

“Then We Came to the End” centers on a fictional Chicago advertising firm in the late 1990s. The book picks up just after the Internet bubble bursts, when the heady, free-spending ways that characterized the Internet boom begin to yield to economic realities. The firm in Ferris’ book (whose name is never given) has begun employee layoffs as their clients have begun to go belly-up. As their colleagues are gradually and systematically let go, the remaining employees of the firm fill their days with paranoid speculation about who is next to go, gradually becoming less and less productive. Down to a skeleton crew by the summer of 2001, the last of the book’s characters meet their fate when September 11 arrives to erase any hope of an economic upturn.

Although the book has moments of drama and poignancy, I found it most engaging simply because it so accurately portrays many of the people we’ve all worked with before. Like The Office (both incarnations, but primarily the BBC version) and the movie Office Space before it, the main appeal of “Then We Came to the End” lies in its ability to capture the humor in the everyday, mundane aspects of office life – trips to the coffee bar, title jockeying, counting ceiling tiles to determine who has the biggest office, “borrowing” the office furniture of departed employees. Likewise, as a marketer who has spent more than my fair share of time staring at a blank page waiting for a creative idea to come, I was particularly entertained to read about the lengths the employees would go to come up with the next great idea to sell the product du jour.

“Then We Came to the End” is a funny, yet honest and revealing portrait of the type of environment inhabited by much of white-collar America. It is well worth a read.

(By the way, I learned of Then We Came to the End” for the first time about a month ago, when it as showcased in the daily e-mail newsletter VSL (“Very Short List”). VSL highlights one item per day – like a DVD, new artist/song, or book – that flies below the radar of the mainstream media. My former colleague Scott Kraft (now with Six Apart) turned me on to VSL back in October, and I’ve made a number of great finds since subscribing at that time. If you’re interested in signing up, visit http://www.veryshortlist.com.)

28 March 2007 | book review, marketing | Comments