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."

Okay, I decided to finish this when none of my library holds surfaced this week. And you know what? Around the mid-point of this book, when a very different chapter started, then I started to get really into the story and found that the characters were a more than glib, gossipy folks. Couldn't finish. It was all funny ha-ha and really reminded me why I hated working in offices, but when I had much better options on my nightstand, I kept getting distracted. Sorry, I'm sure you're a great first book, but I just wasn't in the mood.

A mildly amusing but mainly bleak look at modern day corporate working life.

The first half is spectacularly funny and relatable. The middle is heartbreakingly honest and engaging. But the end...yikes. The same tools we're used, but the humor was lost and I no longer cared much about the characters. I give him credit for carrying the stream-of-consciousness style throughout, but I wish I would've stopped reading after the interlude in the middle. The plot devices were too contrived, and I really just wanted more buckshelves and chair shenanigans.