Book 21 Mar 2007 08:47 am
“Walking Spanish down the hall”
A new unique idea for promotional tools, and one that will really stick with you. This cube of note-pad paper is for promotion of Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.
Released on March 18, 2007, this new novel is available for purchase everywhere. When you walk into your store, see if THEY are using their cubes, if they were lucky enough to get one! Onto the reviews!
Here is a review from the New York Times writer James Poniewozik.
It is a brave author who embeds the rationale for writing his novel into the novel itself. But 70 pages into Joshua Ferris’s first novel, set in a white-collar office, we meet Hank Neary, an advertising copywriter writing his first novel, set in a white-collar office. Ferris has the good sense to make Neary’s earnest project seem slightly ridiculous. Neary describes his book as “small and angry.” His co-workers tactfully suggest more appealing topics. He rejects them. “The fact that we spend most of our lives at work, that interests me,” he says. “A small, angry book about work,” his colleagues think. “There was a fun read on the beach.”
…
Above all, Ferris has a sixth sense for paranoia. Information professionals crave information, and when it is denied them — who is going next, how many and why — they spin superstitious theories and adopt curious totems. The employees discover that the office coordinator keeps tabs on which furniture belongs in which offices, and they fear that their chairs — scavenged from laid-off peers with better furniture, in a round-robin so complex no one remembers whose Aeron was originally whose — will get them fired. The chair becomes a symbol for all that is hated and lusted-after about work. It is a prison and a status symbol, a reminder that “their” offices are not really their own, a means of exercising minor tyranny, a reward, a throne, a life preserver.
And from that same link, the first chapter of the novel.
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. Most of us liked most everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled. We loved free bagels in the morning. They happened all too infrequently. Our benefits were astonishing in comprehensiveness and quality of care. Sometimes we questioned whether they were worth it. We thought moving to India might be better, or going back to nursing school. Doing something with the handicapped or working with our hands. No one ever acted on these impulses, despite their daily, sometimes hourly contractions. Instead we met in conference rooms to discuss the issues of the day.
FYI, “Walking Spanish down the hall” is the axiom for getting fired in the novel. So go check out this hilarious debut novel, all the reviews give the impression that you Won’t regret it. Remember the book is already in stores now so go check out your local independent bookshop and pick it up.
Tags: available, embargo, fiction, fired, hachette, hardcover, joshua ferris, little brown, march release, then we came to the end, walking spanish