Then We Came to the End - post III

The final section of the book was the one that was most able to bring tears to your eyes of both laughter and sadness.

After wondering for weeks if Tom Mota will return to the office he comes back in fantastic style wreaking havoc before being arrested. His appearance dressed as a paint ball gun toting clown puts the lives of the rest of the office workers into stark relief.

In the moments before they expect to die a fair few of the characters have moments of piercing clarity where they decide not only what is valuable to them but which direction their lives should go in. Among them is Mota himself who is able to slay his dragons with the clown attack.

Following his reapparance and arrest the pace speeds up and the remaining members of the ‘we’ are laid off. And then time passes and it moves into reminiscing mode.

What is interesting about the whole process is how believable it feels but at the same time how detached you feel reading it. The idea of being laid off does not fill you with dread and by the end is almost an inevitability.

The meeting of the characters to hear a reading by one of their previous workgroup provides a chance to tie up the loose ends and bring the narrative to the present. The book comes to a close with the question about the narrator being left unsolved and the reader feeling that they are sitting next to the voice in the car waiting to drive off into the future.

A review will follow soon…