Then We Came To The End - Joshua Ferris

Everyday I sit in my little office typing on my computer. Sometimes I go to meetings and sometimes I take coffee breaks to gossip with my co-workers. It's all very mundane. But, then I watch movies like "Office Space" or television shows like "The Office" and I realize that this experience is so common to so many people, and yes, there are actually many aspects of it that are quite humorous. Ferris's novel is along these same lines. His characters work for a large advertising agency that is going through a severe downsizing. The characters scramble to look busy, spread rumors about each other, and then descend like vultures on the worthless items left behind by those who are given their notice. Style-wise, I found it interesting that Ferris chose to write his novel in the second-person. Everything is told from the perspective of "we" and "us" and we never find out who the actual narrator of the novel is. I thought it gave the book an interesting feel. Many of the little interactions between the characters are clever and made me smile thinking of someone in my own office who behaves the same way. But, the plot drags and gets a bit tedious at times. I actually think this book would be better presented as a movie, but then again, maybe too similar to the working drone productions already out there.