Then We Came to the End

"Hilarious in a Catch-22 way, but with an undercurrent of sadness that works counterpoint to all the absurdity."

"A terrific first novel . . . awfully funny."

"Ferris brilliantly captures the fishbowl quality of contemporary office life, where nothing much happens and the smallest events take on huge significance. . . . The narration (done in the technically challenging first-person collective) never falters, making this a masterwork of pitch and tone, in which individual characters are less important than the general mood of boredom leavened with camaraderie." 

"We in office world know these people. We work with them. But Joshua Ferris, in his virtuoso first novel, makes us see them. He writes in a conspiratorial tone of such delicious knowingness that I read Then We Came to the End with a great grin on my face. By turns hip, wicked, and incisive, the novel plumbs the nuances of office humiliation, soaring entitlement, goofy pranks, busy-making maneuvers, low-grade venality, and ever-present schadenfreude. . . . You won't want to miss it."

"Mr. Ferris has our number. He smells our fear, our vulnerability. . . . His observations are often ticklish, making the book feel like the one we have rattling in our heads."