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The Unnamed
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The Unnamed
Unavailable
The Unnamed
Audiobook8 hours

The Unnamed

Published by Hachette Audio

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Joshua Ferris' debut novel Then We Came to the End was both heralded by critics and a New York Times bestseller, and marked the arrival of a startlingly talented young writer. With THE UNNAMED, Ferris imagines the collision between one man's free will and the forces of nature that are bigger than any of us.

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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 18, 2010
ISBN9781600248788
Unavailable
The Unnamed

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Reviews for The Unnamed

Rating: 3.500000066981132 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

424 ratings65 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of my favorites
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Joshua Ferris has a great writing style. I'm a total sucker for all those literary techniques they teach you in school that may or may not be intentional. The one thing I loved about this book was the foreshadowing. I never knew what was coming next but my mind was always trying to figure it out based on what I knew was inevitable. So why only three stars?
    Style was great. Content/plot... meh. Honestly, this man's profession had so little to do with the book was irritating. I don't feel either the main plot or subplot came full circle in this book, but the effort to make the subplot do so seemed so forced.

    I could see this book ending up in high school English classes someday. Stylistic devices? Check. Whole book one big metaphor? Check. Good moral? Check. You get the picture.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting, if not slightly sad, story about a man who has a strange illness that compels him to walk and walk and walk until he needs to sleep. It strains his marriage and affects his career, obviously, and eventually takes over his life, more or less. There's also a subplot of a "murder mystery" of sorts.
    It's a story about "til death due us part" significance, coping with illness and being family. All the characters have depth without being corny or unreal, that is to say they are authentic. The only challenging detail about the story is their endless bank accounts...but they have lucrative jobs, so I have to assume this is possible.

    Also, for a "read by the author" audio book, the author does a pretty good job. Far better than my previous audio book! (Sorry, Ralph)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I would say that this book was well-written, but dreadfully depressing. If your in your Goth stage, you might really like it. It was also well-read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I read an excerpt of The Unnamed right before the release date (a year ago.) It had such a weird set-up, I couldn't get it out of my head, and I wanted to buy it so I could finish the story, and find out what the hell was wrong with the main character. Why did he wander? Was he possessed? did he have a disease? hidden superpowers?

    Well, I'm pleased to say I managed finally to borrow this ebook from the library and I didn't pay one dime for it. PHew. Then I read it like a maniac in two sittings. It was kind of short. Thank FSM.

    It wasn't a "strange disease" novel, or horror, or supernatural... it was just depressing. And you never really get told what the hell was wrong with the wandering man, you just have these caricatures of the fractured and suffering family.

    The story itself flipped between narrative, and a sort of schizophrenic watered down stream-of-consciousness. Is that it? was he schizophrenic? Unfortunately, you just never find out. OH! but a couple of his toes fall off, one is "mummified," and falls off in his sock. I liked that part. Ha!

    In fact, the whole story was somewhat like one of those made-for-TV, based-on-a-true-story movies from 15 years ago, that you stumble on when lying on the couch with a cold and flipping channels in the middle of the afternoon. Seriously? What else are you going to watch? And after you've seen the first 30 minutes, you must know how it ends, even if it stars Jennifer Love Spidereyes Hewitt. Except for the part where the TV show tries to give you a happy ending. In Unnamed, everybody gets old and dies in the end, with no answers.

    Very unsatisfying, and now I am sleep deprived. Damn you, OCD. I'm going to have to spend more time on my affirmations: "You are a good person. Good people don't have to finish bad books. You are a good person. Good people don't have to finish bad books. You..."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    this is such a sad, sad book. it made me cry at one point so I know he does develop a concern for the characters within the reader. it's somewhat intriguing but ultimately not that great. he is a good writer and I appreciate his inventiveness but I can't say that I loved it...
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This seemed like it was trying to be a character driven book. The characters, though, were mainly driven by metaphorical resonance. E.g., the protagonist literally cannot stop walking (away). As with most books that I-got-my-MFA!-ish, it's about the inevitability of death.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tim walks. For no discernible reason, he walks. He's taken by the compulsion to walk, to keep going, to not break stride for any reason--it doesn't matter if he's in conversation, if he's tired, if he wants to stop to buy a sandwich. At the end of his walks, he calls his wife for a ride home from wherever his body took him this time.

    Skimming the reviews here, I feel like I'm just about the only person who liked this--though I'm in the minority who wasn't wowed by Then We Came to the End. Like Tim, the book starts with a straightforward progression and then begins to meander, taking tangents and revisiting old topics seemingly at random, an obvious parallel to Tim's worsening condition.

    Waffling between 4/5 stars; erring toward five because this is the first book I've enjoyed so completely in a long time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So, I read this at the same time I was reading Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin, and a lot of the same ideas come up in both books. No, Voluntary Simplicity does not encourage people to chuck it all, take a walk, and not turn back. But it does deal a lot with conscious action and awareness and how living consciously can often alienate us from the rest of society. In The Unnamed, main character Tim is trapped in the dichotomy between mind and body. He prefers---as many of us do---to live almost exclusively in his mind, until his malady hits and he's at the mercy of his body, his mind a mere passenger.

    There's a scene in which Tim is sitting still, absorbed in something at the office late at night when he's surprised by the motion-sensor lights shutting off. The surprise pulls him back into his body, reminds him that he's not just a mind functioning on its own. This scene sums up the premise of the book for me.

    There's the micro-version of this single-minded attention that excludes all else with Tim and his attorney colleagues focusing laser-like attention on the task at hand and ignoring all else around them, including their bodily needs and their families and the weather. Then there's the macro-version, in which there are signs all over of global warming and ecological disaster and people all over the country barely notice them (if at all) as they go about their lives. (This scenario is in Voluntary Simplicity, too.) Of course, everything seen from Tim's point of view is suspect, so the reader needs to decide for herself whether to trust Tim's perspective or not. Maybe there really aren't bees dying off; only Tim sees them because they don't exist for anyone else.

    The story of Tim's illness seems to be a metaphor for the journey through life. We travel through life feeling complacent until something wakes us up and we reconnect mind and body and notice our surroundings as if for the first time. We travel through life as one individual ego, essentially separate from everyone else even though we are, in fact, connected to and dependent upon every other entity with which we share this world. What does it take to bring awareness to this interdependence and the need for compassion and collective action? What is the motion sensor light that will bring us back into the world?

    All of which is a long way of saying I came upon this book at the exact right moment, I think, and I found it immensely satisfying.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An interesting and engrossing story about mental illness, famlies, relationships and loyalty. I loved Then We Came to the End; this is quite different but equally compelling. The frustration and bewilderment of both main characters is comes through in their attempts to keep their relationship intact while coping with a mysterious illness. The effects of physical, spiritual and mental sickness is shown. A great choice for book discussion, I would think. I will look forward to Ferris's next novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Quite a gear-change from Ferris's raucous debut. It's a stylishly written study of a couple's disintegrating relationship, but reminded me more of Mr Peanut than Then We Came To The End, oddly. Not quite as strange as Ross's book, nor as entertaining.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tim is a successful lawyer, happily married. But he suffers a strange compulsion to walk without stopping until he falls asleep. Upon waking, he calls home and his wife comes to find him. His illness goes undiagnosed, either physically or psychologically.This is a story of being different, of not being in control, of not understanding your own life. Tim struggles to understand what is happening to him, and to maintain hope of a normal life. The book is well written and I found it difficult to put down. I identified with Tim's sense of frustration, and with his wife's worries for him and for their relationship.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A high-powered lawyer finds himself overcome by a strange condition that no doctor can explain, in which he is compelled to walk, sometimes for many hours, in some direction not of his choosing before collapsing in a random spot to sleep.It's hard to know quite how to describe this book. It's partly about the difficulties of illness, especially unexplained illness, partly about the stresses and graces of married life, partly about the conflict between the mind and the body, and no doubt partly about a number of other things, as well. It's a decidedly odd story, but also oddly compelling, and even if I'm not entirely sure what to make of it in the end, I did find myself sitting up reading it much later than I should have.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Joshua Ferris, of Then We Came to the End (a national book award finalist), has again written something of a masterpiece. Tim Farnsworth has a strange disease that, at different points in his life, forces him to walk. Walk and walk and walk. He can't control his legs and believes it's not a mental affliction but something physical. This affects his work, his relationship with his wife, and his ability to be a good father (though he seemed somewhat of a workaholic jerk regardless). It's not the unusual story Ferris imagined that makes this book so good but his writing style. While I read this book, the style evoked memories of reading Hemingway, T.C. Boyle, and later of Chuck Palahniuk.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Improvement on 'Then we came to the end'. Sad portrayal of finding out what it means to be human and what is really important in our lives.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As The Unnamed begins, Tim Farnsworth is making his way home, exhausted and confused. He's going to lose it all, he thinks. His beautiful house, the comfort of a bath, his family. He was forced out of the building, he tells his wife Jane wearily when he gets home. We, the readers, think perhaps he's been fired, but Jane knows it's far worse than that. Tim walks. He doesn't walk for his health or to enjoy a beautiful day; he doesn't even walk to get where he's going. It's not a constant thing, but when the compulsion comes upon him he is slave to it. He leaves in the middle of a conversation with a client, he walks out of the courtroom when he's at trial, he gets up out of bed, and he walks, regardless of the weather or his state of dress or undress.Tim and Jane have been dealing with this thing, this illness, this condition, this compulsion, for years, now. It is, in fact, their third go round, and they're as ready as they can be. Jane fills Tim's emergency pack with supplies--power bars, lip balm, cold weather gear, a GPS device--and places it by the front door, hoping against hope that he'll grab it when he's walked out the door. If he remembers to turn on the GPS she can track him as he walks. If not, he will call her before he collapses in exhaustion at the end. Either way, she will drop what she's doing and bring him home.The grim opening sequence is actually the start of a beautiful and moving story of love and loss and loyalty, a story which perfectly captures the way life moves along, unyielding, towing us with it whether we understand what's happening or not. The novel is relentless and bleak, but it's also staggeringly, sometimes painfully, beautiful, as Tim and Jane and their daughter Becka cycle through bouts of the disease, moving forward--and sometimes regressing--in their methods of dealing with it. Jane is long-suffering, though hardly a saint, Becka is at first sullen and embarrassed, later compassionate. All three are uncomprehending and bewildered.Joshua Ferris' narrative is circular and repetitive, and far more questions are raised for the characters--what is the nature of love? of marriage? what must a family endure? does our identity lie in our actions, in our body, in our mind?--than they can possibly answer. And yet, once again, such is life. The Unnamed is definitely not for everyone. It's not humorous like his brilliant first novel, Then We Came To the End, although there are occasional flashes of humor. But if it speaks to you, you will certainly love The Unnamed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thought the impact of the walking on his family/job/life was more interesting in the first 2/3 of the book than the more introspective final 1/3.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Heartbreaking, thought-provoking, Rich in details. Not as good as 'Then we came to the end', but that was a masterpiece.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    (Adding this to my library now though I read it some time ago--this title just now showed up as a recommendation and I want to confirm that yes, it's a good recommendation. ;-)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Really not sure how I feel about this, so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt and adding the third star. Ferris handles the tone well, but I never quite got a sense of why we should care about this story. Whereas the distance he kept from the characters in Then We Came to The End proved to be an advantage - allowing the reader to see the the twisted family dynamic at work in the office - here it's a liability with only 3 major characters. The end result comes off as a half-baked version of The Time Traveler's Ex-Wife, with all the grimness that entails.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What begins as a fascinating walk across a landscape dotted with interesting characters and intriguing premises turns into a tedious hike by the final third of this book. There's no doubt that Ferris is a skilled storyteller. But "The Unnamed" seems to meander in too many spots.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Heartbreaking love story, written beautifully. Brings to mind many issues: wedding vows and family and trust, self-discipline and true grit, plight of homeless and mentally ill, and even office relationships. Enjoyed it very much.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A brilliant, touching, painful novel perhaps not similar to the author's first work. It is a narrative in different voices of one man's illness and how it affects primarily himself and his wife. Tim Farnsworth, the protagonist, has an undiagnosed and sometimes unmentioned 'unnamed?' mental illness or physical compulsion that expresses itself in Tim's unpredictable onset of walking until he physically can no longer walk and falls asleep (in odd places). Perhaps the book is too realistic, and assuming one can embrace the premise that there are people all around us who have illnesses or struggles that are unique and not clearly diagnosable, then this book becomes compelling and painful.The author does not over-do the pathos and suffering that the book could deliver, but strings along enough moments to absolutely crush any placidity and boredom a reader might feel. Aside from some portions which were dry and lagged, and some confusing inner dialogue llate in the book the author didn't clear up, the prose was direct and the action real. A worthy tearjerker about how a couple truly in love and a man are crushed by mental illness.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Tim Farnsworth lives an ordered life. He has a wife, a daughter and a successful career as a lawyer. But that order is disrupted by a disease - an unnamed, undiagnosed, disease - which leads to compulsive walking. At any time, he finds himself forced to get up, walk until he is exhausted, and then fall asleep - after calling his wife to come to fetch him. He tries to control it: his wife leaves her job to take care of him; he dresses prepared; carries a bag with him wherever he goes. But ultimately, he loses his job, his family and his mind. Not all of this is related to his walking - his wife gets cancer, for example, but he can't respond to this, because this disease means his life has to be all about him. That I think is one of the themes of the book: the difficulty of functioning when everything has to be about taking care of you. Another is about constraint and the smallness of life. Much writing about life, domesticity and law are critical of inward lookingness; of getting focused on the small details, getting things out of proportion and not looking at the bigger picture. Here, Tim is forced out of inward looking - he can't get things out of proportion because his problem is so extraordinary and his world is so big. When he wants to see his daughter at a music festival, he works for weeks ensuring that his walks will keep him in the area. But it doesn't give him meaning - he just loses his mind.A book with interesting ideas. It dragged a little at times. I think this had to do with the perspective thing - it was written very strongly from Tim's perspective, meaning that it wasn't always clear where we were and what had happened - and indeed how sane Tim was at the time. But overall it was worth reading, although perhaps not as good as it could have been.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wish I'd just stopped reading this when it became clear, early on, that it wasn't going to measure up to And Then We Came to the End (which I loved). The premise, of this guy suddenly having to walk and walk till he collapsed, was just too odd, and whatever it was supposed to metaphor just didn't work.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I'm still only halfway through, but it reads like a rip off of the Time Travelers Wife.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A strange book, very well written in part, other parts weaker. Strong portrait of a marriage struggling to cope with a disease and its effects. Excellent depiction of corporate life and a man's effort to hang onto his job despite his worsening illness. Satisfying details of survival on the road and breakdown of the body due to abuse over time. Moving and depressing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Obviously, this book was not for everyone. Having read Ferris's first book, I wanted to read this. I was aware of the less than positive review from the NY times but I thought he deserved my attention because I loved his first novel. I thought this was a very creative book. I really felt the pain of the characters. It was not a happy book and I see that some of the negative reviews reflect the bleakness of the subject matter, but I accepted that. Ferris works well with words and although there were some questions that could have been raised about this and that overall the book worked for me. I would have liked to understand Jane a little better, especially after Tim rejected her. The bottom line is that , you have to give Ferris credit for a a unique and creative book. Based on his first two novels, I eagerly await the next one.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Why? Just, why? The last 50 pages were unbearable, but I soldiered on just in case things were going to be wrapped up. No such luck.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I have to hand it to Joshua Ferris: it is an interesting idea for a story. A successful lawyer with a wife and daughter has this mental/psychological disease that causes him to stop what he is doing and start walking. He walks until he is exhausted and falls asleep and no one has any idea what is the cause and how to stop it. The problem is that it was poorly executed.The characters were not very well developed, especially the wife Jane and daughter Becka. There were way too many unresolved and seemingly random references (bees, birds, odd murder subplot) where I wasn't sure if the author meant something by them or just forgot to get back to them. Maybe they were delusions in his mind--hard to tell. If they were, how were they relevant?Overall, I had a hard time getting through this book. It was depressing and frustrating to read with a few sections of redeeming value. Tough for me to recommend this book.