The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

I'm one of the many people who loved Joshua Ferris's debut novel, Then We Came to the End. But I had no idea how he'd follow that up. Would he do another first-person-plural book? Put out another book solidifying his status as the voice of cubicle ennui?

Nope on both counts. The Unnamed is his second, and it's completely different from the first--but similarly unsettling. It's the story of Tim, a middle-aged attorney who lives comfortably with a wife and teenage daughter. But since this is a novel and all, there has to be something wrong with him, right? Of course. He has a mysterious disease where one day, at a random time, he'll just start walking. He's awake, but he can't stop, can't slow down until he collapses in exhaustion--in a bus terminal, outside a fast food restaurant, in a park in Newark in the middle of the night. Tim's "spells" come and go; sometimes he's in remission for months or years at a time, but he accepts it as inevitable that at some point, he'll start walking jags again.

He and his wife, Jane, have a system for these flareups. Once he starts up with these spells, they get him ready: he sleeps in hiking gear and carries a pack of essentials with him at all times (even to his fancy Manhattan firm). And Jane will come get him, no matter where he is, no matter what else she has going on. She quits her job when he needs treatment, takes care of their daughter while he's either working long hours or wandering, and never questions his unwavering assertion that it's a physical illness, not a mental one.

The latter point becomes one of the major tensions of the book--is he crazy or isn't he? This moves into a question of whether he's doing all he can to figure that out for sure. After years of trying tests and various treatments (and an NEJM article starring him for his utterly unique and unidentifiable condition), he has more or less taken a "whatever happens, happens" approach. This is pretty much where the start of the book finds him, after a remission of a few years.

But the medical mystery of it all is almost beside the point, as the narrative focuses tightly on his partnership with Jane in their unusual situation. It's a fascinating glimpse into the limits of so-called unconditional love, and ponders just how far "in sickness and in health" goes. Tim's sickness transcends the diagnosis, and becomes relevant only insofar as it reveals a different facet of their marriage with every frustrating relapse, every small disintegration of an aspect of their lives. The interesting thing about Ferris's approach is that the good is not mutually exclusive with the bad--some of Jane and Tim's best and most heartfelt moments are also the most horrifying.

Like with Then We Came to the End, Ferris's writing is clear, unpretentious, and solidly constructed. He seems to know that with a somewhat out-there plot device at the heart of the book, the prose needs to be uncomplicated. And I just like his style. I definitely recommend this one for a well-paced, absorbing read.

Some of my favorite parts:

"Did she need him? She didn't think so. Was there really only one person for you, one man, the one? She didn't think so. She would sit with him if he were wasting from Parkinson's. If he was wasting from cancer or old age, she'd sit with him. If he just had an expiration date, of course she'd sit with him. But this thing, this could go on forever. Is that how she wanted to spend her life?"

"He realized he might have been doing it wrong for years. He might have seen interesting things had he been able to let go of the frustration and despair. He wondered what kind of life he might have had if he'd paid attention from the beginning."

"He discovered fourteen messages waiting for him. One was from Becka wishing him a happy birthday. The others were from Jane. He had meant to be self-preserving, not cruel, in not calling her back, but he understood now that he could not have it both ways."