I didn’t particularly enjoy Joshua Ferris’s last book, Then We Came To The End, perhaps because its theme (the tedium and chronic insecurity of modern office life) was a bit too close to home at that time. Many of the events in it paralleled my own experiences a little too painfully. Fortunately those days are now gone and I was in a happier mood to read The Unnamed, and I thought it was a much better book, original in both theme and execution.
This is a great book for walkers, but in a rather perverse way. Not for lawyer Tim (the main focus of the book), a gentle stroll through quiet countryside, but rather a compulsive need to take-off, in an OCD type of way, a driven emigration from family, work and comfort into the snowy outer wastes of the city, however inadequately dressed, whatever the time of day and night.
Tim walks until he is exhausted and then gets found among the rubbish bins behind a Safeway, or knocks on someone’s door asking for help. He phones home and begs his wife to come out and save him, but has no idea where he is. Telephoning the emergency services for help is pointless when you can’t give your location. This it a terrible and unique affliction which confounds doctors and specialists and could easily lead Tim to his death.
Tim doesn’t know why he is possessed of this dangerous ailment. He gets found miles from home and later a toe drops off from frost-bite. His ambulatory episodes threaten his family life, his job and his mental stability. His compulsion becomes life-threatening: he takes off without food or water, without money, and soon his wife makes him wear a rucksack all the time containing basic provisions. The hiking boots and two pairs of socks do not look good in the law office.
Like so many sufferers from bizarre conditions, Tim invents stories to explain his behaviour. In order to explain his frequent disappearances from the office he tells his colleagues that his wife is dying from cancer. This fabrication lead Tim into ever deeper layers of deception and the truth has to come out later, providing more shame and embarrassment.
Ferris is brilliant at describing the corporate consternation when a senior partner turns up for work in a bicycle helmet loaded with electronics to measure brain activity (the latest attempt by the medics to get to grips with Tim’s affliction). Unfortunately Tim also seems to have a very high embarrassment threshold and somehow fails to realise that wearing the helmet while representing a prestigious client in court is not such a good idea. One can only feel sorry for the client, arraigned on a murder charge and represented by a lawyer so bizarrely attired.
We cannot help but feel for Tim as he is stripped of his partnership and then eventually returns to work as a staff attorney, no longer mixing it with the other partners but having to take whatever work he is given. It takes him some time to realise his new status as Ferris continues his relentless exploitation of the twists and turns of office politics. This is his forte, and anyone who has ever taken a part in office life will remember how status changes are so carefully monitored by colleagues – the way someone is moved from his own office to open-plan, the way an older, experienced person ends up working for someone young and up-coming.
It would be a shame to reveal any more about this book – it would be just too easy to spoil. After all, a theme as unique as this should be unpacked slowly one step at a time, something at which Joshua Ferris excels. I found this book drew me on through Tim’s tragedy and there are many unique aspects to it which I haven’t mentioned in this review.
This book is genuinely novel - I can’t think of anything quite like it. Its themes resonate well in a world of strange compulsions and phobias and in a way Tim’s need to walk is something many people feel about getting out of their work-lives and heading off into the unknown. Alas, the world he finds himself in is a dark and dangerous place and most people would feel its better to stay inside in the warm, even when the corporate stuff just seems too much to take.
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