They spend their days - and too many of their nights - at work. There's Chris Yop, clinging to his ergonomic chair; Lynn Mason, the boss, whose breast cancer everyone pretends not to talk about; Carl Garbedian, secretly taking someone else's medication; Marcia Dwyer, whose hair is stuck in the eighties; and Benny, who's just - well, just Benny.

Then We Came to the End is your life and my life. It is how we spend our days and too many of our nights. It is about being away from friends and family, about sharing a stretch of stained tiled carpet with a group of strangers we call colleagues. It is about sitting all morning next to someone you deliberately cross the road to avoid at lunchtime. Joshua Ferris's brilliant first novel follows a

Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, ageing with the grace of a matinee idol. He loves his work. He loves his family. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out on all of it. He cannot stop walking.