To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Reviews

"Audacious, risky, and powerfully bleak, with the author's unflinching artistry its saving grace."—Kirkus (Starred Review) "Spellbinding....The Unnamed unfolds in a hushed, shadowed dimension located somewhere between myth and a David Mamet play."—Laura Miller, Salon.com "With almost Pynchon-esque complexity, Ferris melds conspiracy and questions of faith in an entertaining way...Full of life's rough edges, the book resists a neat conclusion, favoring instead a simple scene that is comic perfection... Smart, sad, hilarious and eloquent, this shows a writer at the top of his game and surpassing the promise of his celebrated debut."—Kirkus (Starred Review) "Arresting, ground-shifting, beautiful and tragic. This is the book a new generation of writers will answer to. No one in America writes like this."—Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook A "wry, intelligent novel that adroitly navigates the borderland between the demands of faith and the persistence of doubt...In seizing upon both the transitory oddities of contemporary life and our enduring search for meaning, Joshua Ferris has created a winning modern parable...He's a gifted satirist with a tender heart, and if he continues to find targets as worthy as the ones he skewers here, his work should amuse and enlighten us for many years to come."—Shelf Awareness "Accomplished and daring."—Tod Goldberg, Los Angeles Times PRAISE FOR THE UNNAMED:

"A stunner, an unnerving portrait of a man stripped of civilization's defenses. Ferris's prose is brash, extravagant, and, near the end, chillingly beautiful."—The New Yorker "This is one of the funniest, saddest, sweetest novels I've read since Then We Came to the End. When historians try to understand our strange, contradictory era, they would be wise to consult To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. It captures what it is to be alive in early 21st-century America like nothing else I've read."—Anthony Marra, author of New York Times bestseller A Constellation of Vital Phenomena "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is beautifully written. It's also funny, thought-provoking, and touching. One hesitates to call it the Catch-22 of dentistry, but it's sort of in that ballpark. Some books simply carry you along on the strength and energy of the author's invention and unique view of the world. This is one of those books."—Stephen King "An astonishing and compelling novel."—VeryShortList.com "Utterly compelling. . . . Ferris brilliantly channels the suburban angst of Yates and Cheever for the new millenium."—Booklist (starred review) "A portrait of a couple locked in an extreme version of a familiar conflict--the desire to stay together versus an inexplicable yearning to walk away."—O, The Oprah Magazine Expand reviews