Joshua Ferris has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Summary
A big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel about the absurdities of modern life and one man's search for meaning, by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris, one of the most exciting voices of his generation. Paul O'Rourke is a Manhattan dentist with a thriving practice leading a quiet, routine-driven life. But behind the smiles and the nice apartment, he's a man made of contradictions, and his biggest fear is that he may never truly come to understand anybody, including himself. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual. At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love, and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.
©2014 Joshua Ferris (P)2014 Hachette Audio
Ins Freie
Summary
Tim Farnsworth ist ein attraktiver Mann im besten Alter. Seine Frau Jane liebt ihn, trotz mancher Krisen, auch nach all den Jahren noch. Obwohl er meist bis spätabends in seinem Büro in einer angesehenen Anwaltskanzlei in Manhattan arbeitet, mag er seinen Job. Und auch wenn sich seine pubertierende Tochter Becka immer mehr hinter ihrer Gitarre, ihren Rastalocken und einem Polster überschüssiger Pfunde versteckt, bleibt sie für ihn das schönste Mädchen auf der Welt. Er liebt seine Familie, sein Haus und seine Arbeit wie nichts sonst auf der Welt. Und doch steht er eines Tages auf und geht fort. Nicht weil er möchte, sondern weil er muß. Weil ihn nichts mehr halten kann. Er macht sich auf den Weg, hinaus ins Freie. Doch es wird kein Aufbruch hin zu neuen Horizonten. Es wird ein Abstieg in die Hölle, und so sehr seine Frau auch versucht, ihm dabei beizustehen, ist es am Ende doch ein Weg, den er ganz alleine gehen muss.
Gesellschaftsroman, Eheroman, Psychodrama: "Ins Freie" ist ein ebenso beeindruckendes wie verstörendes Buch über die Zwänge der Gesellschaft und die apokalyptischen Kräfte in uns selbst. Es ist ein Buch über eine dunkle Obsession, die einen Menschen am Ende dazu bringt, das zu zerstören, was er liebt. Es ist die bewegende Geschichte eines Paares, das sein glückliches Leben als Selbstverständlichkeit betrachtet, bis von einem Tag auf den anderen alles unwiederbringlich auseinanderbricht.
©2010 Luchterhand (P)2010 Random House Audio
Then We Came to the End
Summary
An astounding debut novel, wickedly funny and big-hearted, about life in the office, signals the arrival of a gloriously talented new writer. No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the Chicago ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best. The characters in Then We Came to an End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. As one colleague after another is seen "walking Spanish down the hall" (office shorthand for being fired), the survivors obsessively parse their bosses' decisions - when they're not competing for the best office furniture left behind or trying to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work". Joshua Ferris has a demon's eye for the details and emotions that make up our lives, and he has written a hilarious and moving novel about the strange selves we become when we walk through the office doors each day.
©2007 Joshua Ferris (P)2007 Hachette Audio
The Dinner Party
Summary
The first collection of short stories from the critically acclaimed, prize-winning author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. These 11 stories by Joshua Ferris, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, are at once thrilling, strange, and comic. The modern tribulations of marriage, ambition, and the fear of missing out as the temptations flow like wine and the minutes of life tick down are explored with the characteristic wit and insight that have made Ferris one of our most critically acclaimed novelists. Each of these stories burrows deep into the often awkward and hilarious misunderstandings that pass between strangers and lovers alike and that turn ordinary lives upside down. Ferris shows to what lengths we mortals go to coax human meaning from our very modest time on earth, an effort that skews ever more desperately in the direction of redemption. There's Arty Groys, the Florida retiree whose birthday celebration involves pizza, a prostitute, and a life-saving heart attack. There's Sarah, the Brooklynite whose shape-shifting existential dilemma is set in motion by a simple spring breeze. And there's Jack, a man so warped by past experience that he's incapable of having a normal social interaction with the man he hires to help him move out of storage. The stories in The Dinner Party are about lives changed forever when the reckless gives way to possibility and the ordinary cedes ground to mystery. And each one confirms Ferris' reputation as one of the most dazzlingly talented, deeply humane writers at work today.
©2017 Joshua Ferris (P)2017 Hachette Audio