Then We Came to the End...

...at which point I said 'Thank God'.

I really really thought I was going to like this book - indeed - I really wanted to. It has left me a little unsettled. Not in a 'what is the meaning of life/who am I/what did that mean' kinda way bit more of an 'is that IT?'

Granted the plot has some clever twists but on the whole the book struck me somewhat as an idea someone had that they refused to quit and into it they slid other pieces of writing they'd done that they couldn't quite bring themselves to abandon.

Ferris is a good writer - I'm not for a moment suggesting he isn't - and can quickly and efficiently draw characters both likeable and awful. From the moment Karen Woo appeared I loathed her yet straight away felt an affinity for Jim. And I like that the narrator is unspecified. A good touch that allows both the writer and reader a much greater freedom of movement with regards to access to the plot. It grants the reader much more ownership than other devices would have.

I appreciated from the blurb that this was a text about not a lot - a haiku of a novel if you will - but even so I expected to be able take away something. And perhaps part of the objective was to create an ultimately disposable novel in a bid to reflect how the workers in the text felt about their working lives. Are we done now? Then I'll go home as the others really do nothing for me and so I'll leave them behind.