The Unnamed

Starred review from November 16, 2009
In Ferris's remarkable second novel (after Then We Came to the End
), a life of privilege comes to ruin as a result of a strange and mysterious illness. Attorney Tim Farnsworth thought he had recovered from a disorder that compels him to walk to the point of exhaustion. But now his walking disease has returned and shows no sign of going into remission. His wife, Jane, supportive beyond measure, does everything she can to keep Tim safe during his walks, including making routine midnight trips to pick him up. As the disorder takes increasing control over their lives, however, the sacrifices they make for each other drive them further apart. Ferris manages to inject a bizarre whimsy into a devastatingly sad story, with each of Tim's outings revealing a new aspect of his marriage. The novel's circular aspects, with would-be happy endings spiraling back into chaos and then descending further, integrate Ferris's themes of family, sickness, and the uncertain division between body and mind into a vastly satisfying and original book.

Starred review from November 15, 2009
A successful lawyer finds himself blindsided by a mysterious affliction in Ferris' sophomore effort, an even more ambitious and provocative novel than PEN/Hemingway Award winner Then We Came to the End (2007).

Tim Farnsworth's condition has no name (hence the title), and it may disappear for years at a time, but when it returns, Tim feels compelled to walk with no destination, to the point of exhaustion, abandoning all responsibilities of work and family until the disease disappears as mysteriously as it has arrived. With echoes of Samuel Beckett, Tim explains the inexplicable,"You go on and on. Your one note gets repetitive, it's taxing." And some readers might well find this novel taxing in its repetition—as taxing as Tim's wife, Jane, finds dealing with her husband as she also battles first alcoholism and then cancer. As in the author's first novel, office politics play a part here, and there's a deft interweave of the comic and the tragic, but ultimately this dark narrative permits only one ending. With Tim and his doctors trying to determine whether his problem is physical or mental, the book can be read as a parable of addiction or any other condition that refuses to recognize a distinction between mind and body. Or simply as a meditation on the human condition, an evocation of"the ordinary banality of endurance" beneath"the blank expression of eternity." This is Ferris' Something Happened—appropriately enough, since some reviews of Then We Came to the End invoked Catch-22—defying in its very premise"the rigid orthodoxies of cause and effect!" upon which most fiction depends.

Audacious, risky and powerfully bleak, with the author's unflinching artistry its saving grace.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2009
Ferris's title refers to an unidentifiable disease that compels protagonist Tim, with no warning, to walk compulsively, no matter the distance or time of day. His disease, which is unpredictable and has affected him for many years, keeps Tim's wife, Jane, and daughter, Becka, in a state of alert and constant anxiety. While much of the novel is about marriage, commitment, and family illness, readers are gradually taken into uncharted territory. It becomes apparent that Tim's disease is a metaphor for man's inherent lust to wander. The motivation for this lust is unclear, but that's what makes the novel interesting as it stimulates readers to formulate their own interpretation. Ferris ("Then We Came to the End") is adept at characterization: Jane may be devoted to her ill husband, but she still has her weak moments, which make her character very human. VERDICT Ferris is an intrepid writerhe doesn't provide a solution (there's no cure for Tim)but he does explore all of the consequences. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/09.]Victor Or, Surrey P.L. & North Vancouver City Lib., B.C.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2009
In a radical departure from his satiric workplace comedy, Then We Came to the End (2007), Ferris turns in a dark and utterly compelling second novel on the insanity of modern life. Tim Farnsworth is a very successful trial attorney who suffers from a mysterious illness. With no warning, he is overcome by the physical compulsion to walk and walk to the point of physical exhaustion. So far, he has recovered twice. But with the third recurrence, the illness threatens to take his family under. Over the years, his wife, Jane, has rescued him countless times, in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, from suburban communities and city parks. Now both Jane and their daughter, Becka, struggle with deep sadness and the loss of hope as Tim returns home less and less often. Ferris imbues his story with a sense of foreboding, both for the physical world, in the grip of record-breaking temperatures, and for the vulnerable nuclear family and its slow unraveling. With his devastating metaphoric take on the yearning for connection and the struggles of commitment, Ferris brilliantly channels the suburban angst of Yates and Cheever for the new millennium.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)