Then We Came to the End

'How we hated our coffee mugs! Our mouse pads, our desk clocks, our daily calendars, all the contents of our desk drawers. Even the photos of our loved ones taped to our computer monitors for uplift and support turned to cloying reminders of time served...' Welcome to the world of Joshua Ferris's dazzlingly acute, brilliantly original, agonizingly funny novel. The dotcom bubble has just burst on an advertising agency on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. Employees shuffle slowly up the steps towards the revolving doors, afraid of what is waiting to greet them inside their cubicles... Then We Came to the End is about how we spend our days and too many of our nights. It is about being away from friends and family, about sharing a stretch of stained carpet with a group of strangers we call colleagues. It is about sitting all morning next to someone you deliberately cross the road to avoid at lunchtime. Joshua Ferris's fabulous novel is the story of your life, and mine. It is the story of our times.