Book Report: Into The Wild

Into the Wild
By Jon Krakauer

Description:
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.



In the book I read just prior to this, Brendan Wolf, the protag had a 'thing' for Into The Wild and often spoke fondly of Chris McCandless, often times fantasizing about a life in which they lived together in the Alaskan Wilderness. I learned the basics of the Into the Wild plot through Brendan Wolf, and decided that I should try to rent the movie.
Not long after, I was in the video store, looking for a movie to rent when I was (as I always am) suckered into their 'buy two get two free' deal on the previously-veiwed DVDs. Into the Wild was actually my second choice; the previews had always sort-of interested me but I just wasn't interested in enough to actually watch it. So I came home with my four new(old) movies and Into the Wild was the first one I watched.
I immediately fell in love.
I was fascinted by the story and character of Chris McCandless. The film is incredibly well done. It is long and ping-pongs between Chris's final days in the bus, and his ventures that led him to be in this current situation. The movie starts as Chris graduates college. He turns down his parents offer to bestow him with a new car, then later in his room cuts up his credit cards and social security card and then takes to the road in his faithful old Datsun. Chris in infatuated with the grandiosity and freedom of nature, and without a map or provisions, drives until he can drive no further and then continues his internally-driven quest by foot. He meets a variety of people and experiences a variety of landscapes, occasionally taking the odd job only to earn enough money for items necessary to continue his travels. This is wanderlust at its finest. Anyone who has ever dreamed of blindly picking a spot on the map and escaping it ALL will be indulged with this movie.

I was blindsided by the tragic ending--Brendan Wolf never mentioned Chris's heartbreaking demise. Tragedy is really the only word to describe it.

So in love was I with this story that I wanted to read the book. I had imagined it to be a novel--I knew Chris's story was true, but I still thought I was going to read a written mirror of the story I'd just watched.

What I got instead was what I would classify as a companion to the movie. Jon Krakauer is an excellent researcher and magazine writer, and out of years of work and interviews and travels to retrace Chris's journey, he put together this insightful biography of Chris's life. There are answers here that the movie couldn't quite acheive, and insight into the McCandless's lives, and even research about other young men who undertook similar journies as Chris's.

Although not what I expected, I appreciated this deeper look into a life I had become so instantly fascinated with. Honestly though, this may be the one time I would recommend watching the movie before reading the book. The movie entertains, while the book probes deeper and therefore looses its 'story' effect.

Into the Wild is a story I will never forget. Chris McCandless and his alter ego, Alexander Supertramp, seem to have won over many hearts despite some controversey over his death. Was he just a stupid kid who had no business being in the Alaskan wilderness? Did he get what he deserved? Or was Chris a slave to his inner self, simply trying to put his demons to rest?

Incredible work by Krakauer for this story. Told with respect and personal insight, sympathy and fairness, Krakauer has turned Chris McCandless into a legend--and rightfully so, in my opinion.
Five out of five stars

Book Report: Brendan Wolf

Brendan Wolf
by Brian Malloy

Description:
Who is Brendan Wolf? It all depends on who you ask.

* To the staff of a Minneapolis nursing home, he's the devoted partner of a much older man who's recently suffered a debilitating stroke.

* To the women of a conservative, Christian pro-life organization, he's the tireless volunteer grieving over the recent loss of his wife and their unborn child.

* To one gay activist, he's the unaffectedly charming, yet directionless and unemployed man that he's fallen hopelessly in love with

* To his brother and his brother's wife, he's the lynchpin of a scam that will net them enough money to start their lives over somewhere new.

* To the general public, he's an armed and dangerous fugitive

All of these people - and yet none of them - Brendan Wolf is an ambivalent lover, reluctant conspirator, counterfeit Christian, and, most of all, an unemployed daydreamer obsessed with a dead man.




First sentence:
Brendan is in the park on what those assembled are calling a glorious day: the sky is clear blue without even the wisp of a cloud, the temperature is hot but not oppressive, and there is a soft breeze that gently sways the branches of the trees overhead, creating an agreeable rustling sound.

This story is very much a character journey, a sort of coming-of-(middle)aged story as Brendan Wolf (a pseudonym chose for himself inspired by Chris McCandless's 'Alexander Supertramp') finds the meaning of love amidst the mess that his life is quickly becoming. Dangerously close to losing yet another mimimum-wage job, Brendan is about to become homeless. Chapter one sees him riding the bus to visit his brother, an inmate soon to be released after surving time for swindling the elderly out of their savings. Ian, aware of Brendan's predicament, gives Brendan the address of an elderly man with a hunger for young men, pampering them in return for relations. Although turned off by the proposition, Brendan soon has no choice. He arrives on the old man's front step, single suitcase (filled mostly with well-loved books) and proposes to act as the man's servant (sans the sex) in exchange for a room. When Marv insists on that one small detail, things turn sour. Brendan tries to blackmail Marv, threatening to tell the cops of the old man's deeds. Marv relents, barely, and when Brendan returns home from work one day, he finds the locks have been changed and Marv has burned all of Brendan's treasured books. Enraged, the two get into an arguement. But before they can come to blows, Marv drops from a stroke.

At first guilt keeps Brendan at Marv's side. He lets the hospital staff mistake him for Marv's 'next of kin'--the inmate now locked up with Brendan's brother. Marv cannot talk to tell the truth, and in fact can't do much of anything. Brendan has time to figure things out.

Meanwhile, Brendan's brother Ian is released from jail and he and his wife are cooking up a scheme to steal pledge money from a pro-life group on the day of their big marathon. To pull off this intricately designed job, they need Brendan's help. Soon Brendan finds himself volunteering at the organization, stuffing envelopes under the sad alibi of a recently-widowed man who lost his beautiful wife during childbirth. He is quickly taken under the wings of the 'gals' who volunteer, and one of them even tries to set Brendan up with her daughter, unknowing that Brendan is really gay.

Lies and deceit are a common motiff in this story, as Brendan develops many different names and stories to suit his purposes. He's longing for love, still hurting after the recent break-up, and finds solace in books--constantly referring to Chris McCandless, or Brian's idealized version of him. These lies ultimately bring about his demise, as it becomes impossible to keep each thread of his life from tangling. For all his efforts to protect himself, in the end Brendan still 'gets what was coming to him'--only by this time, he is ready to change, to accept love and give honesty, tragically after the curtain has fallen.

My only complaint would be that at times, this story seemed a little long. But because of this book I discovered 'Into the Wild', and for that, I am most appreciative.

Four out of five stars for characterization, simple and relaxing prose, an eye for detail and writing the ending that needed to be written.

Book Report: Coal Black Horse

Coal Black Horse
By Robert Olmstead

From the flap:
When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable: she instructs her only child to find his father on the battlefield and bring him home.
At fourteen, wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety--blue on one side, gray on the other--Robey thinks he is off on a great adventure. But not far from home, his horse falters and he realizes the enormity of his task. It takes the gift of a powerful and noble coal black horse to show him how to undertake the journey of his life: with boldness, bravery, and self-possession.
Yet even that horse is no match for the brutality and senselessness of war, no surrogate for the courage Robey needs to summon in its face. It's in the center of that landscape, as witness to the lawlessness and carnage around him, that he is forced to raise a gun for the first time in his life. When he returns to his mother, Robey Childs will be the best a man can be, and the worst, irrevocably scarred by all he has seen--and all he has done.

First line:
The evening of Sunday May 10 in the year 1863, Hettie Childs called her son, Robey, to the house from the old fields where he walked the high meadow along the fence lines where the cattle grazed, licking shoots of new spring grass that grew in the mowing on the edge of the pasture.

I nearly quit this book early on when I caught myself head-jumping between mother and son, but I'm glad I grit my teeth and kept going. This story is very simple, a coming of age tale in which a young boy realizes the world is not what he thought it was. I enjoyed the history and actually picked it partly to learn about the civil war--though through Robey's eyes most places and events were nameless and left to the reader to already know what part of the war was unfolding. While Robey might not spout off such details, he sees a great deal more--of finer focus.

This story puts the reader right in the heart of the war, dodging bullets and cannonballs and sword play and death, carnage and destruction in ultimate 3D effect. You can feel the bloodspray, hear the screams and tearing of flesh, breaking of bone, smell the rotting wounds as Robey tip-toes through morning-after battlefields littered with the dead and dying. The violence of it all actually gets hard to read, and I can tolerate just about anything. Nothing is safe as both humans and animals are slaughtered en masse.

The horses standing in harness held their heads high as their lathered flanks heaved with every breath. They danced and trod heavily and then they too began to fall onto their haunches and sides but not before eight or ten bullets found their wet-sleeked hides, their withers, their long necks, their ribs, their croups, their powerful beating hearts. It was never the intention to kill the horses, but that was how thick and crossed the fire was in those first minutes of chaos.
He could see a cannonball striking sparks as it bounced over the rounded cobblestone and then slowing and gently rolling his way. He jumped aside, but another soldier, his gaping mouth still gobbed white with a paste of crackers and cheese, held up his rifle as if stepping into water and put his foot out to stop the cannonball and in an instant his foot was gone and blood was gushing out the stumped end of his leg onto the street where his blood showed like red glass in wet sunlight. A second cannonball blew a soldier's head clean off and continued on to smash another man to death. The headless soldier walked three more paces before falling to the street where his dead body shook fishlike before extinguishing.

Throughout the story, the focus is on Robey and his encounters during his trip. He meets a collection of characters, each playing a role in his evolution into a man, forcing him to harden before his time. His morals begin to change and soon Robey is living by traveling from one abandoned house to the next, living on whatever scraps he can find. The journey to find his father turns out to be anything but the adventure he imagined, and seemingly at every turn a part of him dies or hardens.

The balance to all the darkness and destruction is the coal black horse who silently, and in that way than only an animal can, teaches Robey about himself. The horse is intuitive, brave, and noble. Such an outstanding creature it is, in fact, that it becomes his trademark. The coal black horse causes all other characters to take notice and be envious--even treacherous. As a character states in one of the last pages of the book: "That's a fine horse," the man said. "Any man who'd seen that horse once would know you again." Robey finds peace atop the horse, and I could almost feel the hoofbeats as he traveled...

"It was beautiful to ride the back of the coal black horse and in those first days of journey they traveled constantly. The valley when he discovered it was luxuriant with grass and clover. The red-clay roads were wide and hard packed and the road cuts were dry and banked.
As the days drew by they passed silently through fields, swamps, pastures and orchards. They rode through marsh where the water table was only a few spades deep, but the corduroyed lanes of passage were high set and well staked. They crossed acres of fresh turned earth, plowed straight and harrowed and sown with wheat, rye, and oats shooting the surface and knitting it green. They encountered walls of pine so thick it took days to skirt to find a throughway and when they did it was through a land of wind-blown trees, or dead on the stump, the crooked and angled limbs bleached white with sun."

The little girl in me is still in love with horses and while the coal black horse is a powerful presence, it is not an overwhelming one. Robey remains the main character and the coal black horse his catalyst, not just for the physical journey but the deeper one as well. I enjoyed riding along with Robey, seeing what he saw, meeting the strange (and sometimes frightening) people, experiencing the war that was played out in my backyard as if I were really there. There is a hint of tragedy to this story as Robey seems to deteriorate and become familiar (and comfortable) with death, but perhaps he started off naive and unrealistic. The ending does indeed see him back home, but far more mature--a man though still just a teenager--and lethal.

"This was not the raving mad. This was not for love or greed or ignorance. These are the well bred and the highly educated. This is humanity. This is mankind, son."

Four out of Five stars for a haunting basis in truth, vivid prose, creating an animal character that is truly just an animal, and illiciting reader empathy.

Book Report: Boy A

Boy A
By Jonathan Trigell

This is a 'promotional copy--not for resale' stolen off the top shelf at my local Cargo Largo. (Well, not stolen stolen--I did pay $1.50) Boy am I glad that store loves to rip people off an sell them things not meant to be sold individually.

From the back:
A is for Apple. B is for Bad Apple.
Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions: he's about to be released with a new name, new job, and a new life. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstorous childhood crime.
To his new friends, he is a good guy with occational flashes of unexplained violence. To his girlfriend, he is strangely naive and unreachable. To his case worker, he's a victim of the system and of media-driven hysteria.
And to himself, Jack is on permanent trial: he struggles to start from scratch, forget the past, become someone else.

First sentence:
He's seen noses broken over less: the fag butts on the pavement have been carelessly tossed, five drags left in them.

I loved this book. Like, really loved it. Never wanted it to end. Was fascinated. Awed.

This story starts with a boy named Jack (a named he picked for himself, after being only 'Boy A' for so many years) being released from imprisonment into the real world. He is being set up in a witness-protection like program for his own safety, because if his true identity is ever discovered, he will surely be hunted and killed for a crime he committed that was so horrible, it shook the nation. The details of the crime itself are breadcrumbs scattered throughout the story, tidbits dropped in sparingly but perfectly, so that a handful of words draws a horrifying picture and lures the reader along for more. Scenes from Jack's childhood are painted the same way, starting with Jack's isolation from other children, the bullying and meaness that created an outcast, then the relief when Jack discovers a friend in the dark and often cruel Boy B. The two become friends (if you could call them that) and through what may have started as innocent little-boy activities quickly become sinnister and utterly evil. There is a true sense of foreboding in these pages, a sense that something horrific is being born.

"Get something to hold it down, quickly," he said.
B appeared, with their digging tools. He slid A's flat wood beneath the eel, and pushed the point of the nail just slightly into its oily back. Then, with a half-brick, he banged it home. The eel hissed wetly, and bucked its head upwards, as the nail passed through it and into the wood. Fatty blood splattered. One small drop went in B's mouth.
The eel fought for an hour, while its tormentors shared A's pack-lunch. They always shared. B got free school meals, but the scrap-saving, flap-armed dinner ladies didn't do take-outs. He tried to feed the eel a bit of Mighty White crust, only for some reason it wasn't hungry. It twisted around to bite at the nail though, tearing the hole in itself larger and larger, yet still unable to get free.
When it finally gave up the ghost, B ripped it from the board and threw it into the Byrne. It sank for a moment, and then inexplicably rose to the surface again. They pelted it with stones like when they had the jonny. But it wouldn't to away. Eventually it drifted out of sight.

Simultaneously, the story progresses in real time as Jack struggles to fit in to the false life he's been given. He befriends his coworker, meets his first girlfriend, and struggles to keep all the lies straight.

This is the house that Jack built. This hide of twigs and leaves. A little extra camouflage added every day. Another little sprig of lie, that he must remember and believe, or die. He can't do anything other than stay inside his hut, and hope he's safe from prying eyes. Except to pray, if he still can, that no one kicks the sand foundation. And no one checks the brittle sticks that support the straw roof. And most of all, that no one huffs and puffs.

Each chapter is named and ordered alphabetically, and the view points change between that of Jack, his therapist/case worker, and once, a female therapist who worked with Boy A and Boy B during the trial. After working with these boys, the therapist goes home and sits in her yard to enjoy the weather and her son, and finds her son torturing insects. In this instance, there was a very kenetic feel to the emotions, as if the essence of evil is contagious or a dark poison that leeches through the air, tainting whomever it touches. This was a powerful, illustrative diversion from the main story line.

The style of writing is entrancing. Each word is perfect and well-placed, exact. Insightful.

The official rockets shoot up in clusters. They crackle like high amp rice-crispies as they fire. Explode into bright, life-loving, punk-rock colors. Then drift slowly downwards like destroyed worlds. Jack is entranced. He holds Shell's hand, but doesn't murmur a word while volley after volley lights up the sky. When it's all over, the darkness looks more dark because of what it's known.


As the story progresses, Jack's noose tightens. His cover begins to unravel, his fears play out. Already an isolated young man, the climax finds him completely alone through a very clever play of vengence from a character never expected. Contemplation (and the carrying out) of this downfall is heartwrenching and Jack's destruction is heartbreaking and gripping. The final paragraph mirrors a passage from earlier in the book, landing this story gently and leaving the reader amid the ripples of amazement, sorrow, and wonder. This is very much an exploration of evil and how it comes to be born, and I enjoyed the thoughts it provoked.

Terry's felt the power of that perverse desire. He believes that everyone has. He can still picture himself as a child, sat on a bus, biting his tongue to stop himself shouting out: 'You're all fucking spastics', at a group of happy, helpless, handicapped. Even as an adult, he's had to fight the need to take his wife, by force, when he found out about her affair. Yes, rape. Just to show her that he could, not from desire, just to wipe that bloody smirk away. Does that mean he's evil? Or is it that without those urges he could not be good? If being good is a denial of the bad then those we deem evil are not worse, they are weaker. And if goodness means anything at all, surely it means the strong helping the weak. That's what Terry thinks.


A line of praise on the back cover reads: 'A modern day immortality tale...delivered with a horrific sense of foreboding.'

I think this describes Boy A prefectly. Horrificly foreboding, a slow unfolding of events that keeps you by the throat even as things become almost too painful to bear. Excellent read.

Five out of five stars for imagery, illiciting emotion, originality, realism, and overall captivation.

Book Report: Name The Baby

Name The Baby
by Mark Cirino

Found this book at Half Price books, in the clearance bin.

From the flap:
Name the Baby is the hilarious, heartbreaking rant of a young man whose girlfriend has just committed suicide in their New York City apartment. Burdened with guilt, sadness, and rage, he can't bear to stay in the apartment, so he grabs the gun his girlfriend turned on herself and heads out the door.
Embarking on a wild search for meaning and solace, he hits a blues bar first, gets kicked out, and continues on to a dance club where he dances the night away with a beautiful girl he'll never see again. He then visits his family in New Jersey, where he walks the family dog, takes mushrooms with his younger sister, and watches the local high school's performance of Romeo and Juliet. After the play, he boards a bus back to New York City and returns to his apartment, where he finds something that forces him to finally face up to his sadness and guilt.
Over the course of his three-day odyssey, he reflects with rousing originality on family, failed relationships, music, Shakespeare, dogs, cemeteries, and drugs. Conversational and intimate, he sweeps the reader away into his turbulent twenty-one-year-old world. Full of haunting surprises, unexpected warmth, and brutal honesty, Name the Baby is a raucous, soulful tale about the mysteries of life and love.

At page 38, I wanted to hurl this book across the room and call it a loss.
At page 39, I was in love.

This first-person story is so heavily saturated in dialect, just getting used to the sometimes-grating New York accent took some work. The words crowd each other amidst long, chunky paragraphs--not the type of book to read if you're tired or have ADD. The opening pages introduces the reader to a cocky, arrogant protagonist who tries to forget his troubles by drinking them away in night clubs. I could not feel any empathy, in fact, I was even turned off by him.
But after his night out, the protag decides to catch a bus home, and everything about the book got better: the accent fades, the protag shows vulnerability, the writing becomes more wistful and poetic.

Going home, somehow, is like defeat in the worst way. You don't go home; you retreat home. There's nothing, I mean nothing, glorious or victorious about visiting your parents at your old house.

The story procedes with a sense of familiarity and of strange comfort as the protag goes through the motions of normalcy, reflecting about events that are anything but.

And the images of the night turn familiar, and the stones on the street compramise their shapes, and the glory moon in the high heaven splits and scatters, and the stars in the sky are spread for all seasons. Is it selfish to think all those things are only there for you? Is it selfish to think that no one else is looking at the stars at that instant, and that they're just putting on a show for you, so you can have an inside joke, a secret, among just the two of you?And, of course, shortly, the phenomenal theater of the universe fades, and I imagine Leonia, with her grace of a diamond, until I showed on the scene and interrupted, stomping my Timberlands to the wrong rhythm, tripping her up in the process. Only way for me to look at it is that life got in the way of love, and death got in the way of life, restoring the love.

Cirino has a gift that was buried in this story under his own character. His writing in lyrical and dazzling and thoughtful, the story moving, the emotions real. There are many hints and questions sprinkled throughout, details fed out slowly but never completely, so that the end of the book resonates with perfect finality and yet, is not. Cirino brings the resolution to the surface, but it is up to the reader to make the grab.

Four out of five stars for permeating tone, insightful and revealing reflections, exposing the bleeding heart of a man who pretends not to have one, and for so cleverly leaving me hanging.

Book Report: The Preservationist

The Preservationist
by David Maine

Found this book in Cargo Largo and bought it on principle.

From the flap:
Noah's family (or Noe, as he's called here)--his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law--tell what it's like to live with a man touched by God, while struggling against events that cannot be explained. When Noe orders his sons to build an ark, he can't tell them where the wood will come from. When he sends his daughters-in-law out to gather animals, he can offer no directions, money, or protection. And once the rain starts, they all realize that the true test of their faith is just beginning. Because the family is trapped on the ark with thousands of animals--with no experience feeding or caring for them and no idea when the waters will recede--what emerges is a family caught in the midst of an extraordinary Biblical event, with all the tension, humanity, and even humor that implies.

I almost set this book back down, but the more I thought about it, the more my imagination conjured up what could possibly fill these pages. And come on, I've never seen a book about the Ark before.

This book is a fairly quick read, and fairly easy to read. It is written simply, rustically, and an aura of the time seems to permeate the pages. Rotating POVs track this plot from Noe's initial sign from God, through the building of the ark, through the first drop of rain and through the hundreds of days trapped on board with the constant job of mucking stalls and using most of the food for the animals. When at last the dove brings back the olive branch, the reader is as relieved as Noe and his family, however, they are still trapped on top of the mountain, held prisoner until the waters below recede. When at last they are free, the ark is unloaded and each new family heads off in a different direction across virgin land with the mission of repopulating the earth.

Much of this is based on established facts: the names, the order of events, and the details (size of the ship, etc.). Maine did a fantastic job of logically filling in the blanks where needed. How did Noe and his family obtain the supplies? How were the animals gathered? What was it like?

For days after, clouds clot the sky like blood.
Noe gathers his family and says, I have given much thought to how to organize the animals on the ship. I propose that we follow God's natural order. As humans created in the image of God, we shall inhabit the top deck of the craft, along with the apes and other two-legged creatures. Below us, in the middle deck, shall be the animals with four legs. Worms and serpents, insects and other abominations, whether multi-limbed or altogether legless, shall be left to the bottommost breaches.
Japeth shrugs.--All right then, that's settled.
Sem is frowning, but it is Chem who speaks.--That's preposterous. Those huge monsters out there, the what do you call them? Elephants, hippos and whatnot? We can't have them amidship, they'll make the boat more unstable than it already is. Which is bad enough, he adds.
Noe blinks.--I see.
An awkward lull ensues, everyone waiting as if for judgment. Sem pokes his wife, who is gazing hard at the floor.--What do you think, Bera? You brought them. How would you arrange them?
She blinks as if preoccupied.--Hmm? Oh, color, I suppose. Brown and gray on bottom, yellow and orange in the middle, black and white on top. Red in the front and blue in the back. Is anything blue?
No one can remember if there is anything blue.
--Anyway, Bera goes on, you can do it the other way round, if you prefer.
Noe stares with mouth open as if wondering at her sanity.--Birds too? You'd put the orange birds in with the orange wild cats and orange snakes?
Japeth laughs.--And orange monkeys, Da. Orange butterflies.
--You asked, shrugs Bera.--That's my thought.

If you've ever wondered, and even if you haven't, this is a great book that is just as much about family dynamics as it is about the animals and the voyage of the ark.
Four out of five stars for imagination and detail, poetic style and originality

Book Report: Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End
By Joshua Ferris

This 'National Bestseller' grabbed my attention while I was shopping for a friend. With it's playful, blocky yellow words set against a red spine, I couldn't help but reach for it.

From the Back:
No one knows us in quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the Chicago ad agency Joshua Ferris depicts in his exuberantly acclaimed first novel is family at its best and worst, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells an emotionally true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.

I actually set this book back down. It was full price at a real bookstore, and I was supposed to be buying a gift. The blurb also struck me as somewhat vague... hinting of humor, but still vague.

Obviously, the next day I went back and shelled out fourteen bucks.

This book is... different. Firstly, this is the first time I've read a story set in the narrative 'we'. About 100 pages in, I realized that the main character is nameless, featureless, voiceless... a fly on the wall describing what goes on around him (him?). The narrative didn't bother me, so either I got used to it quickly or it was very well written--maybe the latter just a little more.

If you're looking for a book about characters, this is the Grand Daddy of them all. This monster of a book (385 pages) consists of very little actually happening in real time. I felt like I was part of this workplace, clustered in so-and-sos office, gossiping and speculating and creating rumors. The pack mentality is spot-on. The 'lens' with which you see this story darts back and forth through time and place, much in the essence of the newer, dry-humored sitcoms like 'The Office'. Much of what happens is told in story form by the characters themselves, which is often interrupted with questions from the other characters. Sounds confusing, and it is a bit, but it's meant to be take in stride and it works. We learn about the history of about half a dozen employees, each with unique personalities and relationships with each other. As the blurb says, this story is most certainly about a family--the sort of family that exists in every workplace. Every behavior is brought to light and rationalized, including the stuff we think nobody knows:

"We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. We refilled our coffee mugs on floors we didn't belong to. Hank Neary was an avid reader. He arrived early in his brown corduroy coat with a book taken from the library, copied all its pages on the Xerox machine, and sat at is desk reading what looked to passerby like the honest pages of business. He'd make it through a three-hundred page novel every two or three days."

Hee. Bloody Brilliant.

"We settled down to the fund-raiser ads. We opened a new Quark document, or took out our pencils. Every once in a while a nicely sharpened pencil would crack on the page upon impact and we'd have to go in search of the one electric pencil sharpener. That was annoying. Back in our chairs we drummed the eraser between our teeth. If a stray paper clip happened to be lying around we were likely to bend it out of shape. Some of us knew how to turn a misshapen paper clip into a projectile that could hit the ceiling. If our attention was drawn to the ceiling, we usually recounted our tiles. When we returned to our computer screens, we erased whatever false starts we found there, suddenly embarrassed by them."

Gee, sounds a lot like the life of a writer...

This book isn't all paranoia over bar coded chairs, and totem poles worth more than two cars. Lynn, the quiet, professional boss, has cancer. Rumor of it has spread and when she schedules a week off from work, the menagerie assumes it is for her operation and recovery. Why, then, does she show up at her office on the morning she should be getting a mastectomy?

The middle third of this book changes gears, and perspectives. We get a glimpse into Lynn's life, her discovery of the lump, her admitting her concern to her boyfriend, and the two of them confronting her innate fear of hospitals. The tone is bittersweet and solemn.

When time catches up to the morning Lynn skips her appointment, Ferris changes the POV back to the collective 'we' with none of the employees none the wiser. They continue to speculate about why Lynn is in the office, throwing out ideas until finally one of them confronts her. Lynn remains cryptic, and 'we' come to the wrong conclusion that Lynn never had cancer in the first place.

As the ad agency continues to go under, characters are lost. The rest of the story weaves together the remaining group's fear and struggles to come up with a pitch they think will save the company (and their lives): What is funny about breast cancer?

The characters drive the story, though, and I really enjoyed a narrative turn for the worse when a recently fired employee returns... dressed as a clown and packing a weapon, seeking revenge on those who wronged him.

Anyone who works with a regular group of people can appreciate this story.

"Tom Mota, ladies and gentlemen--martini addict, gonzo e-mailer, sometime wielder of an aluminum bat, great garden enthusiast, paintball terrorist, and our own in-house Emerson scholar. He had the annoying tic during his time with us of pinning aphorisms to the wall. We liked nothing less than people quoting at us from their corkboards. Hank Neary was the only one who could quote at us with impunity because he rarely made and sense, so we knew the quotation must add up somehow and we marveled at the obscurity. Quotations that tried to instruct us or rehabilitate our ways, like those Tom favored--we didn't like those quotations. We were especially put off by Tom's because it seemed a great irony that Tom Mota was trying to reveal to us a better way to live, when just look at the guy! What a fuckup. He quotations were never allowed to stay pinned up for very long. It would take him days to notice and then he would holler out into the hall, in his inimitable and eloquent manner, "Who the fuck's been stealing my quotes?"

My one complaint with this book is that I was unable to remember everyone. I couldn't make the connection between names and the people they were, until prompted. Ferris makes mention of this syndrome in the story, relating it to starting work at a new place and taking weeks to learn everyone--so I wonder if maybe he purposely did not work to connect the reader with each person but instead let their characters unfold.

I truly have never read a book like this, constructed in such a unique (and let's be honest, odd) way. The resolution takes place five years after the ad agency finally went under, and all the employees come together for a reading of Hank Neary's book, which turns out to be the story of Lynn and her battle with cancer--the exact words from when this story veered off into more mature matters. Interesting.

Many times I could relate, and it made me feel good to know that I'm not the only one who hates my coworkers, steals company time, or enjoys a good gossip session.

"The funny thing about work itself, it was so bearable. The dreariest task was perfectly bearable. It presented challenges to overcome, the distraction provided by a sense of urgency, and the satisfaction of a task's completion--on any given day, those things made work utterly, even harmoniously bearable. What we bitched about, what we couldn't let die, what drove us to distraction and consumed us with blind fury, was this person or that who rankled and bugged and offended angels in heaven, who wore their clothes all wrong and foisted upon us their insufferable features, who deserved from a just god nothing but scorn because they were insipid, unpoetic, mercilessly enduring, and lost to the grand gesture."

Definitely plenty of food for thought.

Four out of Five stars for sly humor, realism, originality and teaching us all a lesson.