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The Unnamed (2010)

by Joshua Ferris(Favorite Author)

3.3 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0316034002 (ISBN13: 9780316034005)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Back Bay Books

review 1: The strangest book I read this year, it's the story of a prosperous lawyer with a happy family life who cannot stop his legs from walking--out of meetings and domestic situations, and into new towns and states before he collapses of exhaustion and calls his wife. His condition gets so bad that he disappears for months at a time, putting a severe strain on his loving marriage. I would've given a fourth star if Ferris had made the protagonist a bit more relatable. Ferris wrote the brilliantly funny novel Then We Came to the End, and that title would've actually worked just as well as The Unnamed for this novel too.
review 2: I'm sure that many aspects of this book will stick with me, and it warrants 5 stars because of how it made me think and feel. I read severa... morel other GoodReads reviews about it, and it seemed to polarize readers; some really loved its experimental nature and some really disliked it and said they found the characters unbelievable. I think one main problem with many of the critics is that they took the story too literally. The protaganist has a physical/mental condition that causes him to start walking uncontrollably for hours on end, which, naturally, wreaks havoc on his family life and his career as a high-powered lawyer. The main tension in the book is how this affects his marriage and how he and his wife decide to deal with the stress that his condition puts on their relationship. The conflict between mind/body, spirit/substance is another major theme. The plot is recounted in a very disorienting manner, especially in the latter part of the book; the author clearly did this to reflect how the protagonist was experiencing his life wandering aimlessly around the country. All in all, it was a profoundly sad book, due to the choices that the protagonist and his wife are forced to make to deal with his condition. less

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