No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the Chicago ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best. The characters in THEN WE CAME TO THE END cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. As one colleague after another is seen “walking Spanish down the hall” –office shorthand for being fired – the survivors obsessively parse their bosses’ decisions, when they’re not competing for the best office furniture left behind or trying to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining “work.” Joshua Ferris has a demon’s eye for the details and emotions that make up our lives, and he has written a hilarious and moving novel about the strange selves we become when we walk through the office doors each day.