Then We came to the End

Then We came to the End by Joshua Ferris   385 pages

In the throes of a business downturn, employees of a Chicago ad agency have nothing to do but gossip and anticipate their turn in eventual lay-offs. Although this book was touted as wickedly funny and hilarious, I didn’t see the humor in it.  I was expecting to read about the office sort of dysfunctional family-office relationships and was sorely disappointed.  While there was an interesting cast of characters, and some of their inanities are funny simply because we experience similar behavior and personalities every day, the light-hearted moments could not offset the seriousness of the focal issues the characters struggled with like breast cancer, depression, and the murder of a child.