Well I finished this book this morning and I really 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 and Amber having an affair; Lynn Mason dying from Cancer and Joe Pope who nobody really knows anything about.
Ferris has captured perfectly office life and 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 and working alongside people all day but not really knowing them. The events that do happen in the book are gradually built up and 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 and 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 rally round and 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 and identifying with the mundanity of work. However for anyone that has luckily not had an office job I am really not sure if they would get it but maybe that's the author's point?
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Thank you and keep blogging!