Joshua Ferris is the author of three novels and a finalist for The National Book Award. His new book TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR is supposed to be his best. The reviews have been excellent and fans love his breezy writing style. One blog reader said he read it in two sittings. It's a timely novel dealing with the repercussions of identity theft and social media, all too familiar to someone who has been hacked twice!
The following review was written by Andrew Bloom...
TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR By Joshua Ferris
The most challenging thing a novelist must do is write something original when it has all been said before.
Literature is filled with thousands of cliched tales about religion, death, stolen identity, regret and the meaning of life, so that when it comes to delving into another story, a reader must wonder, “What’s the point?”
The point is that every now and then, a writer comes along and reinvents a cliche.
Never before has an author intertwined such played-out themes as easily as Joshua Ferris does in his latest novel, “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.”
Here, a close-minded, cynical, stubborn atheist dentist named Paul O’Rourke is haunted by his inability to connect with people and thrive in the modern age. He refers to cellphones as “me machines” and can delete contacts from them as if they were disposable Tupperware.
And that’s all before Paul’s life gets turned inside out when someone begins impersonating him online and spreading crazy religious propaganda that leads everyone to question the dentist they thought they knew.
This is “The Da Vinci Code” meets “The Catcher in the Rye” meets a social media nightmare.
Joshua Ferris is the future of fiction. With “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour,” Ferris creates something new out of old ideas. He creates a new kind of hysteria for the modern age — a 21st century paranoia.
Joshua Ferris is the bestselling author of three novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. He was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40”writers in 2010. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment