“The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.”

–Oscar Wilde

Joshua Ferris’s 2007 debut novel takes place in a dying Chicago ad agency, and although the cloth-covered cubicles and listless conversations in the coffee room were no doubt dystopian at the time, they seem almost quaint now.

The stressed-out “we” who narrates the story is a jumble of cranky art directors and copywriters, whose desultory days are shaped by gossip about their bosses and each other, interspersed with useless meetings and tidbits of sagacity filtering down from their fearsome but idealized boss, Lynn. The dotcom bubble is over and the madcap days of swivel chair races around the office are a thing of the past. The group distracts themselves from worries about being laid off–and forced to do “the Spanish walk” out of the office by speculating on whether or not Lynn is facing a cancer diagnosis.

Although the tone is wry and often funny, Then We Came to the End is a poignant story. Office supplies like mouse pads and desk clocks take on disproportionate importance as symbols of wasted days. A huge part of the novel centres around the “theft” and reshuffling of office chairs after someone has done the Spanish walk. A lonely security guard wanders the building “on his aching feet.” Amid speculation about Lynn’s condition, a mysterious client asks for an ad “that will make a breast cancer patient laugh.” Lynn spends a lonely evening preparing for a mastectomy and then confuses her team by coming in to the office on the day of her surgery. An unhinged ex-employee shows up in a clown suit, waving what looks like a gun and quoting Emerson. Another character, mentioned in passing, is working on “a short angry book” about work, and his colleagues mock him with “there’s a fun read on the beach.”

For me, this book turned out to be neither angry nor small. Ferris once worked at an ad agency and easily portrays the besieged atmosphere of a creative team under siege. But even after moving on to other, probably better things, the characters end up missing the agency, with its make-work projects and irritating colleagues. I felt the same as I came to the end of this early entertaining work, which made a long plane ride pass pretty quickly. It would probably be just as good on a beach.