Then We Came to the End

Critical Praise

"THEN WE CAME TO THEN END, it turns out, is neither small nor angry, but expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny....Even after moving on and rebuilding their lives, the employees who exit Ferris's unnamed firm come to miss it, the drudgery, the infuriations, the hours spent with 'this person or that who rankled and bugged and offended angels in heaven.' And the reader will be able to empathize, coming to the end of this perceptive and darkly entertaining novel."
—New York Times Book Review

"Although Ferris' vision is less grim, it is no less grave; what looks at first glance like a sweet-tempered satire of workplace culture is revealed upon closer inspection to be a very serious novel about, well, America. It may even be, in its own modest way, a great American novel."
—LA Times

"THEN WE CAME TO THE END is very good at capturing the interactions between co-workers, depicting a company as a family of sorts, with all a family's love and annoyance, the kind that make you defend a co-worker vigorously one day and want to stick a knife in him the next....THEN WE CAME TO THE END is an assured debut and an entertaining read."
—SF Chronicle

"Fabulous....The emotional oscillation as employees strive to stay alive (read: employed) is played out by Ferris with the sort of exuberance and energy that marked Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City," to which THEN WE CAME TO THE END might seem a Midwestern cousin.....Ferris' writing displays a strong descriptive flair, but the greatest asset of "THEN WE CAME TO THE END is the nuance of its narrative voice, which has the gossipy warmth and seeming closeness of a conspiratorial co-worker leaning over a partition to impart the latest rumor."
—Chicago Tribune

"We're happy to read about this pathetic and noble workforce from the 'inside,' all the way to the end."
—Wall Street Journal

"As they try to avoid being laid off, Ferris' motley officemates fixate, often hilariously, on furniture, practical jokes, and whether or not their boss does, in fact, have cancer."
—Entertainment Weekly

"This first-time novelist writes a hilarious and sensitive story about coworkers."
—People Style Watch

"Funny in a familiar way, because you know people exactly like the characters who are getting fired."
—Jane Magazine</p>

"Wickedly funny and painfully real"
—Redbook

"The Only Business Book You Need This Year: In praise of the office-drone genius of THEN WE CAME TO THE END."
—GQ

"Wonderfully comic...Ferris masters all this with a subtle technical skill in which inane office patter becomes a kind of joyous celebration of the possibilities of prose. He knows, like other masters of the form, that great comedy has a hard bite."
—O Magazine

""'I have always said that I have absolutely no talent, but a tremendous amount of discipline,' he says. Readers of Ferris’ marvelous debut novel won’t believe that 'no talent' bit. Not one whit."
—BookPage

"[A] funny yet piercing debut novel"
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Joshua Ferris' brilliant and incredibly funny debut novel, "Then We Came to the End," lays bare the strange interconnectedness of human cogs in the corporate machine."
—Newsday

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

"Office workers nationwide, from Madison Avenue to Market Street, will be spending their lunch hours reading his hilarious account of a group of Chicago advertising employees scrabbling to survive the dot-com bust....The office is a breeding ground for collective consciousness, and it's in the interstices between the collective and the personal where things get interesting. And, in Ferris' world, very, very funny."
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Laughing along with Joshua Ferris's THEN WE CAME TO THE END, a staccato-prosed but engrossing new novel about the insipid and obsessive lives of the employees of a dissolving ad agency: 2 hours, 30 minutes."
—Esquire

"It' is the core of Ferris' both funny and sad novel, set in the time when the plenty is running out. THEN WE CAME TO THE END offers it own update on 'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,' in which it's not so much that the business is too big but that the people are so small."
—New York Daily News

"At turns hysterically funny and sad, the novel examines the idiosyncrasies and insularity of the workplace, where officemates, who see each other more than they see their own families, come to anticipate one another’s foibles."
—Chicago Magazine

"The book I've been recommending to everyone lately is a brilliant first novel titled THEN WE CAME TO THE END by a young New York writer named Joshua Ferris. It's an often hilarious, vivid, oddly touching story about office culture -- anybody who's ever worked in an office with the usual complement of dysfunctional coworkers and managers will be able to relate -- but it's of particular interest to those of us who work in media and advertising."
—Ad Age

"THEN WE CAME TO THE END is a vicious sendup of cubicle culture that somehow manages not to lose sight of its characters' humanity....Ferris allows enough sunlight to filter in through the fluorescents that a reader is left wishing his characters well as they polish up their résumés, dry-clean their interview suits, and head off to the next chapter in their lives."
—Christian Science Monitor

"Ah, the doldrums of office life: so pervasive, yet so easily alleviated by doses of modest, company-sponsored delight. This mood—or rhythm, really—is adroitly captured in Joshua Ferris' funny debut novel, THEN WE CAME TO THE END." The reviewer goes onto say "Perhaps in the era of the professionalization of writing itself, many novelists have avoided chronicling the subtleties of office life because it's not perceived as "literary"—or because they have no experience of it. But as THEN WE CAME TO THE END begins to suggest, it is one of the richest settings of our time."
—Slate

"So funny, you may have to call in sick to stay home and finish it."
—Daily Candy Chicago

"A stunning first novel."
—MaudNewton.com

"Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company... It's a luminous, affecting debut."
—The Elegant Variation

"Incisive and wickedly amusing."
—BlogCritics.org

"This is a funny book, but not in an obvious, heavy-handed The Office kind of way. Very engaging."
—Beatrice.com

"I ended up really enjoying this satirical look at office dynamics, and recommend it for anyone who ever did a stint in cubicle hell."
—BookedSolid.Blogspot.com

"The more I read, the more I enjoyed and admired the book and Joshua Ferris’ artistry with words."
—ReneesBookoftheDay.com

"I dare say that this new novel is on that level and far and above anything that’s been written lately."
—AintitCoolNews.com

"An engrossing, often surprisingly moving drama about archetypal office drones you know all too well from your own job"
—VeryShortList.com

"It's a must-read for anyone who's ever despised, adored, envied or loathed their coworkers on a daily basis...This hilarious, dark and deeply revealing book is the most relevant fiction I've read about the modern workspace and the human condition."
—FreshFiction.com

"Rather excellent"
—TodGoldberg.typepad.com

"As a former advertising drone, I was instantly drawn to Then We Came to the End."
—NightsandWeekends.com

"Fans of the popular BBC comedy "The Office" are sure to appreciate the humor and nuances of this debut offering set in dog eat dog world of a Chicago advertising company."
—MonstersandCritics.com