then-we-came-to-the-endwe chose joshua ferris’s then we came to the end as the latest selection of our book club on facebook. ‘we’ includes myself in korea, liz in new york city, elaine in austin, and kate in eugene (we are high school friends). the book club started a couple of years ago, with gilman’s “the yellow wallpaper” as the maiden text. members came and went, and during busy times we put the club on hold. earlier this year, salvador plascencia’s the people of paper left us demoralized and in want of a break. the break happened and lasted until recently, when ferris came into play.

written almost entirely in the all-inclusive first person plural, ferris’s debut novel is a breezy, inviting read. for the most part, the story is set in a chicago-based advertisement agency right at the turn of the century. the ‘we’ are the richly diverse office employees who fill their days gossiping, indulging in personal obsessions, and pretending to be busy. pretending because the economy is going down, and more layoffs are inevitable. several of them have already ”walked spanish,” and the rest don’t want to go.

we are introduced to most of the personalities in the office: there’s karen woo, the korean-american cutthroat bitch; janine, the depressed mother of a missing (later murdered) daughter; amber, the paranoid catholic who is carrying the illegitimate child of larry novotny, cheating husband; joe pope, who is often accused of being an elitist; marcia dwyer, who gets a really kickass haircut; benny, the jew who has a crush on marcia; jim jackers, the office goof; chris yop, who gets fired and still comes to work; lynn mason, the petite yet intimidating supervisor…and so many more.

the characters’ multiple anecdotes and storylines are beautifully rendered, cleanly woven on top of and underneath one another. it’s tough for us to go back in the novel to find specific points, since all the individual parts, while very separate, all mesh into one collective, complex idea. and that idea is grounded in americans working in an office, as a team, as a group, doing work that may seem meaningless but is actually meaningful. the meaning doesn’t come from work, it comes from working.

one may think then we came to the end is a satire, but it’s actually an insightful dissection of how the working environment in america affects and disaffects our lives. halfway through the four hundred pages, the author wisely inserts a thirty page interlude, where we follow only one character, lynn mason, in a third person limited point of view, through her struggles with breast cancer. everything before this episode, seemingly unimportant office noise, and everything after, seemingly unimportant office noise, are injected with a bit of much needed reality.

when i was working at school, or running in the gym, i could not wait to go back home to curl in bed with this book. it’s fabulously written and completely accessible. whether you read it for the fun (because a lot of the novel is hilarious) or the sagacity, then we came to the end is a must-read for anyone who has ever worked in an environment where they must relate to others.