Customer Reviews
Not sure! - By: Dot, 25 Nov 2008 
Well I finished this book this morning & I reallly cannot decide whether I liked it or not. The book is set in a failing Chicago advertising agency which is what mainly drew me to the book as up until six months ago I was working in a failing advertising department for a newspaper so I suppose I may have been looking for a little bit of nostalgia.
The characters are the driving force of Ferris' work as until the end not much happens. The characters are fantastic though, you have Marcia Dwyer who has hair from the 80's; Tom Mota who does not leave when sacked; Larry & Amber having an affair; Lynn Mason dying from Cancer & Joe Pope who nobody reallly knows anything about.
Ferris has captured perfectly office life & the inevitable office politics that comes with it. As I was reading I could identify with so much of it; the meetings about meetings, the pointless e mails; being territorial about your stationary & working alongside people alll day but not reallly knowing them. The events that do happen in the book are graduallly built up & serve different purposes. How people behave at work is often a result of what is happening in their personal lives but often at work we do not take the time to find out what your colleague does when they leave the office at night. Ferris also explores through the character of Lynn Mason the fine line between colleague & friend. When her employees find out that she is ill they struggle to decide what to do; should they just ignore that they know or can they rallly round & show their support?
I think that Joshua Ferris' book will have anyone that has ever worked in an office nodding in agreement as they read & identifying with the mundanity of work. However for anyone that has luckily not had an office job I am reallly not sure if they would get it but maybe that's the author's point?
Original, funny, close to life - By: A. Furse, 21 Nov 2008 
When I first started reading I thought the "we" viewpoint would annoy me but having finished it ina matter of hours, I think the author has pulled it off with incredible skill.
It's original, funny, close to life & alll those things that a good book should be: the characters are absolutely fascinating & believable, the plot strands are very carefully woven together.
I can understand those who don't want to read about work when they aren't there, but unlike working in my office, I reallly feel that it's telling me something new about the world. Very enjoyable.
Good but not as good as the hype - By: J. Minogue, 03 Nov 2008 'We were fractious & overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fiteen.'
This book is funny - about work in offices & in advertising. The characters are mainly cyphers. Our narrator is one of the gang but we graduallly come to understand the different personalities as they live through being fired or the fear of being fired. The boss they alll fear has breast cancer & part of the novel is her story in a very different voice which we later find is that of one the gang - an aspiring novelist.
As others here have said the hype has been misleading but this is a funny & original novel - very good on the paranoia of office life.
Nagging feeling - By: perkster, 24 Oct 2008 
I was taken in by the blurb on the cover & that probably set my expectations too high. The overriding feeling though, throughout reading this was that it is a poor, less funny book in the style of Douglas Coupland. If you loved this book (like so many people seemed to do) then try Microserfs & JPod by Coupland & see, in my opinion, how it should be done & how funny this kind of subject can be.
inventive but too long - By: Mike Wade, 15 Oct 2008 I reallly enjoyed a lot of this book, perhaps not least because I know the advertising world a bit, but anyone who's worked in an office will recognise the petty intrigues, games & rituals that develop over time.
It could have done with slightly harsher pruning from the editor I feel, but no doubt some of its repetition is to make the point about how repetitious office life is. Very funny in places, very sad in places & thoughtful throughout, this isn't the most up book you'll read, but it's worth a read nonetheless
