Then We Came to The End / by Joshua Ferris

Downsizing is causing some nasty side-effects at one Chicago advertising agency where the firings of some of the company's most tenured employees has everyone panicked. The office atmosphere, usually rife with turmoil during good times, now resembles a Hospital waiting room as a steady stream of stress, dismay and worked-up indignation force workers to find ever-more frantic ways of coping with the situation. Copywriter and quote-meister extraordinaire Tom Mota doles out daily doses of transcedentalist wisdom amidst his routine tirades while stuffy, workaholic Joe Pope's pretentious ramblings continue to provoke office pranksters towards ever-inventive ways of pulling one over on him. Meanwhile the fast-sinking Carl Garbedian tries to calm his anxiety by "borrowing" deskmate Janine Gorjanc's medication (intending to give it back as soon as he's diagnosed with what he feels is the same thing). Rumors that supervisor Lynn Mason has breast cancer inspire awkward sympathy and compassion but mostly just provide welcome gossip about the head woman herself who's now doubly overwhelmed. One by one, as workers are laid off, the entire office desperately tries to maintain some semblance of composure.

In an age when corporate satire is in vogue and humor of the pathetic is running itself into the ground, everyone is trying to get in on the joke. And while Ferris' Dibert-esque tale is somewhate original with its first-person plural narration and observant reflections, it still treads down the already-been-done path as numerous other projects featured on multiple mediums ("The Office", Office Space, The Corporation, The Informant, Personal Days: A Novel / by Ed Park, Smartest Guys in the Room, etc.). Not that the book's badly written or fated not to entertain. Readers will appreciate Ferris black humor, if not for it's originality, then for it's depiction of human nature amid a suspended crisis. (FIC FERRIS)