Hollie reviews 'To Rise Again at a Decent Hour' by Joshua Ferris which was shortlisted for the Man
Booker Prize 2014.
If you are looking for a funny book to
read over summer, look no further than the latest offering from
Joshua Ferris. 'To Rise Again at a Decent Hour' is a funny book and
when I say funny, I mean genuinely laugh out loud, annoy your
flatmates, funny.
But taken at face value, the subject
matter is far from hardly light.To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a
contemplation on religion; its authenticity and our relationship with
God. Tied up inextricably in the plot are the concepts of social
media and how we consume the internet.
Allow me to introduce you to the
protagonist Paul O'Rourke...
O'Rourke is a successful dentist,
living in New York. He's a baseball obsessed loner, an insomniac and
an atheist. As the story unravels we learn about the pattern of
O'Rourke's failed relationships, in which he involves himself in the
religions of his past girlfriends. Despite wanting to learn and
wanting to believe he continues to struggle with the concept of God.
Religious musings aside, O'Rourke is
also a bit of a technophobe. He doesn't want a website for his
dentistry, even though he knows he needs one and he certainly doesn't
want a Facebook page. But, after an encounter with a strange client,
someone begins to impersonate O'Rourke online. First the imposter
creates a website for the dentistry, then adopts O'Rourke's
personality on Facebook and Twitter, venting religious views.
O'Rourke embarks on a journey to discover who is pretending to be him
and why.
The parts I enjoy most in this book are
when the narrative takes a break from O'Rourke hunting down his
imposter and focuses on his daily life as a dentist. These moments
were when O'Rourke's obsessive nature made me giggle and when I would
run my tongue over my teeth at the mention of O'Rourke's clients poor
dental hygiene.
At times Ferris delves too deeply into
the history of certain religious groups which, to me, broke the flow
of the story. In these parts I found myself struggling to engage and
just wanted the story to keep moving. That aside, Ferris offers an
impressive tale full of wit and mystery and at the end of the story
all I could think about was having to pay a visit to the dentist.
