Product DescriptionCharlie Barnes, sixty-eight years old, reasonable man, small-business owner is facing the abyss and it's time to reckon with how he has lived his life so far. What happened to all those great ideas that were snatched from the jaws of success? And what was with all those unsuccessful marriages? Well, who's counting the wives when Barbara, his fifth and most permanent wife, is such a rock solid pillar of society?Maybe Jake Barnes, son of Charlie and writer of his story is counting. Now that his father seems to be on the way out, Jake begins to wonder what Charlie Barnes's desperate dreams of success have really added up to. If his father's life was a series of fantasies, then how is it possible for his son to tell the truth about him? And will Jake have to confront the fact that in their ambitions, and their delusions, they might not actually be so very different?Joshua Ferris's new novel is both a profoundly tender and brutally funny portrayal of a life lost in the American dream.ReviewBrilliant, funny, heartbreaking . . .Family, memory, ambition and death, all told with dervishing glee. Not just a daredevil of a novel, but something truly new -- Andrew Sean Greer, author of LessFunny, moving, and formally a work of genius,A Calling for Charlie Barnes is quite literally the book Joshua Ferris was born to write. -- Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on FireDazzling. Mind-blowing. About as much fun as you can have without risking arrest ?Richard Russo, author of Empire FallsAdeeply funny, very moving book . . . Ferris's hijinks are serious; his play is profound.There is magic in these pages -- Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland ElegiesA Calling for Charlie Barnes iswonderful:fast and deep, urgent and brilliant . . .A hilarious, intimate, and scathing takedown of so many American vanities -- Dana Spiotta, author of Stone ArabiaFerris's workcuts to the heart of who we are by focusing very painfully on who one man was . . . Consider this booknot just a work of grief or love or memoir, then, but a work of hope, too. ?Publishers WeeklyJoshua Ferris has proved hisastonishing ability to spin gold from ordinary air . . . As brave and adept as any writer out there ?New York Times Book Review on To Rise Again at a Decent HourNot too many authors have written the Great American Office Novel... Then We Came to the End feels like a readymade classic of the genre. . . .A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness ?Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times on Then We Came to the EndDismayingly funny in the way that only really serious books can be ?Guardian, on 'To Rise Again at a Decent Hour'Brilliant, funny, stomach-turningly accurate ?Observer, on 'Then We Came to the End'Very funny, intense and exhilarating ?The Times, on 'Then We Came to the End'About the AuthorJoshua Ferris was born in Illinois in 1974. He is the author of four novels and one collection of short stories. His debut,Then We Came to the End, won the PEN/Hemingway award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and his most recent novel,To Rise Again at A Decent Hour, was nominated for the Booker Prize and won the Dylan Thomas Prize. He lives in upstate New York.