The Unnamed

I really enjoyed Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came To An End, but was reluctant to read The Unnamed (2010) because the plot didn't sound that compelling to me. A successful lawyer with a family develops a condition where he goes through periods where he starts walking until his body gives out to sleep and rest. But after seeing several good reviews I decided to give it a chance and I am glad I did. It is a strangely compelling story, which almost comes across as a fable. However, I don't think its lessons are easily found. It is a fable that treats this imaginary disorder as if it were a real event-not necessarily matter-of-factly, but certainly realistically. I find his descriptions of the one child family of a successful upper class lawyer's family utterly realistic and true to life especially when held up to other contemporary books that I feel were much, much more contrived and artificial (Jonathon Franzen's Freedom and Jennifer Egan's The Goon Squad). In fact, the story almost seems biblical in the fact that at the onset of his walking jags are accompanied by biblical acts of nature: unprecedented cold, unseasonable swarms of bees, torrential rain. Perhaps, it suggests that we often take for granted the simple aspects of life that make seem incredibly bare when taken away. I found Ferris's depictions of the lives of his characters, their problems, their reactions to certain events and their inner lives full of verisimilitude. This is a strange, compelling and moving novel on several levels.