This must be the strongest, most well-written comedic first novel about a workplace ever published – it really beats the hell out of that category. It’s like Catch-22 meets The Office. At first, Then We Came To The End seems like a memoir, like this first-time novelist has simply taken his own experiences from a past workplace and spun them into hilarious literary gold. Even then, the author’s powerful literary talent keeps multiple hilarious coworker anecdotes juggled in the air at the same time and the frenetic pace makes the workday pass quickly. But at the very end we find out who the narrator really is, and suddenly you realize this author is an even better writer than you thought (and suddenly the weird part in the middle makes sense). A truly excellent first novel. Not quite the same thing as a truly excellent novel, but an exciting showcase of emerging literary talent nonetheless.

I found this book amusingly quirky. I think you either really like it or don't, nothing inbetween

If you like "The Office" with Steve Carell, you'll like this book. I enjoyed it because it is the same kind of humour....dry and quirky.

The first chapter or two were good...and then the story started to drag on and on. I quit.

not funny. didn't like it

Wonderful story told unusually in first person collective "we." Once you understand the storytelling method, the story really flows. It's at times pessimistic and at times cheerful but usually humorous. If you ever have worked in an office, you will find many truisms from this story. Fun read!

I found it hard to get into the characters and the plot of the book. The narration jumps around so much between events that it lost me sometimes. The writing is funny and interesting from the first person plural perspective but there wasn't enough going on in the plot to keep me really interested. I would pick it up and put it down, pick it up and put it down. I never made it all the way through the book before I had to return it.

I didn't find it very funny, I thought that it was very flat. I haven't worked in an office so it may have been funnier if I had had that experience.

The initial flat affect and vaguely disorienting first person plural narrative voice of "Then We Came to the End" might be off-putting at first. ("We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen.") The reader who sticks with it, though, will be richly rewarded with a surprisingly warm and very human look at the dehumanizing aspects, of which there are many, of the modern office/workplace. Set in a Chicago marketing agency with its wagon hitched to the rise and fall of the dotcom era, "we" are the art directors, copywriters, managers, assistants, accounting and payroll clerks and security guards who battle deadlines and boredom and harbour passions for and against the work and each other ... but truly know very little about each other outside of the offices, cubicles, elevator lobbies, print stations, stairwells and cafeterias where they seemingly spend most of their waking hours. Gradually, three-dimensional people emerge from the caricatures and sardonic one-liners, and real emotions surface as those real people struggle to maintain their identities and sanity and forge genuine relationships as the world around them shifts, jolts and changes. This novel takes a fresh approach to the perhaps overdone workplace setting and cast of characters.

Amusing and poignant, told in a unique third-person voice. Recommended for anyone who's ever worked in an office or suffered through a company on the way down.