To Rise Again at a Decent Hour: A Novel [Paperback]

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris explores the absurdities of modern life and one man's search for meaning.

Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God.

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.Joshua Ferris is the author of two other novels,Then We Came to the End,which was a finalist for the National Book Award and received the PEN/Hemingway Award, andThe Unnamed.His fiction has appeared inThe New Yorker, Granta, Tin House,andThe Best American Short Stories.Ferris was chosen forThe New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list offiction writers in 2010. He lives inNew York. To Rise Again at a Decent Houris beautifully written. It's also funny, thought-provoking, and touching. One hesitates to call it theCatch-22of dentistry, but it's sort of in that ballpark. Some books simply carry you along on the strength and energy l3œ