Then We Came to the End

Second reading: I'm feeling that achy-love feeling that comes when you've turned the last page of a really good book. What really struck me this time around was the quality of the writing, how everything is so well said and purposeful and just right. It's something that I notice a lot more as I get older, an author's use of language and style, and I have no tolerance for flabby meandering writing. Reader, this book is sharp and on point. Highly recommend.

First reading: Feels kind of like the movie “Office Space”, but better. Seriously.

The book starts off less like a novel and more like a collection of great anecdotes your friend is sharing during happy hour. This was a little unexpected for me, but it only took about a chapter to get into the flow. About halfway through the story structure becomes more linear and plot-focused.

I have to share the following passage because my office just went through the exact same thing with our second floor, and the author totally nailed the feeling:
“[Floor:] Fifty-nine was a ghost town. We needed to gather up the payroll staff still occupying a quarter of that floor and find room for them among the rest of us and close down fifty-nine, seal it off like a contamination site. Odds were we were contractually bound to pay rent on that floor through the year, shelling out cash we didn't have for real estate we didn't need. But who knows - maybe we were keeping those abandoned cubicles and offices in hopes of a turnaround. It wasn't always about ledger work at the corporate level. Sometimes, like with real people, it was about faith, hope, and delusion.”

Life in the office, when things are good and as things grow worse. The stories pour out from the collective voices of the office personnel, dark, light, deep, insignificant, but always out of control. Never feels soap opera-ish, despite the growing despair of the staff facing layoffs and benefit cuts.

I felt compelled to write a brief review of this book having seen one who hated it. I read it a while ago and don't have it on hand at the moment but I do remember the basic plot and I thought it was great and inventive way to depict our modern cubicle lives and it really captured the anomie the pervades office jobs were we are cogs in the great machine, plus it is funny as hell. Give it a try & you won't regret it!