{2013 TBR Pile Challenge - Review} The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

ISBN #: 978-0316034005

Page Count: 320

Copyright: September 14, 2010

Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Back Bay Books; Reprint Edition

Book Summary:

(Taken from Amazon)

Tim Farnsworth walks. He walks out of meetings and out of bed. He walks in sweltering heat and numbing cold. He will walk without stopping until he falls asleep, wherever he is. This curious affliction has baffled medical experts around the globe - and come perilously close to ruining what should be a happy life. Tim has a loving family, a successful law career, and a beautiful suburban home, all of which he maintains spectacularly well until his feet start moving again.

What drives a man to stay in a marriage, in a job? What forces him away? Is love or conscience enough to overcome the darker, stronger urges of the natural world? The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human understanding.

Kathy's Review:

(Originally posted on her personal blog, Grown Up Book Reports, on 10/20/13)

This is going to be one of those novels that I don't remember a month from now. So let me front-load this review with a plot overview. Basically there's this guy, married lawyer with a teenage daughter, who has this affliction where he starts walking and can't stop. His wife has to pick him up wherever he is when his legs finally quit on him. He's been to doctors, he's been featured in the New England Journal of Medicine, and tried multiple forms of therapy. Nothing works.

As the novel progresses, Tim's condition becomes worse and his body deteriorates as a result of the walking thing. Exposure to cold leaves his fingers frostbitten. He experiences hallucinations. Organs fail. Mentally, he loses touch. He has to quit his job and leave his family behind, occasionally checking in with them, but without control over his body, he doesn't want them to have to chase him all over kingdom come.

"The Unnamed," I think, refers to all of the moments that pass us by without us really noticing. All of the little details in life. Later in the novel, after many years have passed, Tim comes to visit his cancer-stricken wife in the hospital. She asks him what he saw when he was walking. He confesses that he wasn't paying attention, so he makes a conscious effort to focus on the details so he can describe it to her.

How did I feel about The Unnamed?

Ambivalent, actually. I had read Then We Came to the End, a wonderful novel by Ferris, and expected great things from this book, which I chose as part of the TBR Pile Challenge. While it is spectacularly written, I was just not as engaged in Tim's story as I was with the gaggle of co-workers at the center of his earlier novel. And like Tim's walks, the book meandered on without any seeming direction. Even though Tim is a sympathetic character, there's nothing compelling about him other than his affliction. I can't even remember his wife's name and I just finished this novel last night. His daughter is a teenager when the book begins, but an adult with a son at the book's end. We miss all the in-between.

So, not completely giving up on Ferris' work, but he's had one amazing and one dud as far as I'm concerned.