This is a debut novel by Joshua Ferris, a book Nick Hornby says is "a terrific first novel...awfully funny," and which Jim Shepard, author of Love and Hydrogen and Lights Out in the Reptile House calls "...hilarious and heartbreaking..." Katharine Weber, who wrote Triangle and The Music Lesson, also thinks this book is "hilarious." Okay, I read the novel from cover to cover -- 385 pages in all -- and not once did I snort, guffaw, or laugh out loud -- criteria, I assume, a book must meet before qualifying as "acidly funny" (according to James Poniewozik, a reviewer for The New York Times).The book is also too long by twenty-five percent. That I stuck with it, however, says something positive -- I'm just not sure what it is. All I know is I'm still thinking about it three days later, and sharing an excerpt here:
At first we called it what you would expect -- getting laid off, being let go. Then we got creative. We said he'd gotten the ax, she'd been sacked, they'd all been shitcanned. Lately, a new phrase had appeared and really taken off. 'Walking Spanish down the hall.' Somebody had picked it up from a Tom Waits song, but it was an old, old expression, as we learned from our Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins."And that's what kept me smiling. The notion of "walking Spanish down the hall," which Ferris had the good sense to repeat, just as my interest lagged.
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