Then We Came to the End / The Dinner Party

I just read Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris and  loved it. It’s written – uniquely – in the collective first person; a device which was well sustained through the book and never felt gimmicky. Then We Came to the End takes place in an office amid the global recession, and is satirical of office life, and extremely funny.

I met Joshua Ferris at a recent Bookslam event, where he was reading from his new book, The Unnamed (now in a queue on my shelf), and he signed my book. He was very gracious and sincere; was grateful when I complimented him!

I’d like my next book to be a kind of Credit Crunch Catch-22, and I hope it can be half as good as this book.

I first discovered Joshua Ferris through this story, one of my favourite published in The New Yorker during 2008. Enjoy.

“She was game, his wife. She spoke to him in bad taste freely and he considered it one of her best qualities.”