An Agency Escapee Takes Aim at the Ad Biz

Fresh Air

Published April 23, 2007 at 12:07 PM EDT

Novelist Joshua Ferris makes his debut with Then We Came to the End, a satire about life in a Chicago advertising agency just as the dot-com boom went bust.

In a front-page rave in the New York Times Book Review, James Poniewozik described Ferris as "fluent in the language of white-collar wordsmiths under siege," and as having "a sixth sense for paranoia;" the novel itself, Poniewozik said, is "expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny."

Then We Came to the End is Ferris' first novel; his short fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Best New American Voices, and Prairie Schooner.

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