The Unnamed

Joshua Ferris

Jan 2010 · Sold by Reagan Arthur Books

About this ebook

The Unnamed is a dazzling novel about a marriage, family, and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both.

He was going to lose the house and everything in it.

The rare pleasure of a bath, the copper pots hanging above the kitchen island, his family-again he would lose his family. He stood inside the house and took stock. Everything in it had been taken for granted. How had that happened again? He had promised himself not to take anything for granted and now he couldn't recall the moment that promise had given way to the everyday.

Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, aging with the grace of a matinee idol. His wife Jane still loves him, and for all its quiet trials, their marriage is still stronger than most. Despite long hours at the office, he remains passionate about his work, and his partnership at a prestigious Manhattan law firm means that the work he does is important. And, even as his daughter Becka retreats behind her guitar, her dreadlocks and her puppy fat, he offers her every one of a father's honest lies about her being the most beautiful girl in the world.

He loves his wife, his family, his work, his home. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out. And keeps walking.

The Unnamed is a heartbreaking story of a life taken for granted -- and what happens when that life is abruptly and irrevocably taken away.

Ratings and reviews

“ He told her of all the city scaffolding he walked under, the manic traffic he managed to avoid, the parade of oblivious people he passed. He told her that he had turned tired in the old way by the time he reached a bench, somewhere near the East River, where his body gave out. How he had crumpled up his suit coat for a pillow and taken off his tie, sweating despite the cold. How he woke up in horror an hour later. “It’s back,” he said.” (6) Joshua Ferris is one of the twenty writers featured in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 fiction issue. In his book "The Unnamed", he gives readers a microscopic look at the decline of his lead character, Tim Farnsworth, and the effects a mysterious illness has on Tim's family and career. When Tim tells his wife, Jane, “It’s back”, the reader begins a curious and unusual trip with Tim and Jane as an ambulatory illness takes control of Tim, causing him to stop in the middle of things and begin to walk. Tim, a lawyer in a prestigious law firm, has no control over this ambulatory illness that has plagued him in the past and is threatening to return once again. Jane organizes her life around Tim's bouts of uncontrollable walking. She packs a backpack so that he has shoes, clothing, gloves, coats, water, and anything else she thinks he might need on the walks that stretch to longer and longer distances. She settles in, ready for the long awaited calls to tell her he has stopped and to please come pick him up. Jane is the picture of patience and understanding throughout these walks. They go to clinics around the world, trying any technique suggested by the various doctors who find no evidence that a disease even exists. In a final attempt to diagnose Tim’s disease, a doctor fits a bike helmet with electrodes to monitor brain activity before, during, and after these bouts. But the readings show nothing and Tim is forced to face the fact that this disease will take over and destroy everything he has: career, home, and, ultimately, his relationship with his wife and daughter. Ferris takes the reader completely inside the family. You will almost hear the crunch of Tim’s footsteps and his frustration as he fails to control his own body. You will stand beside Jane as she rushes to his aid after his many treks, finding Tim crumpled and exhausted on park benches, under trees, and in stranger’s houses. You will feel the same estrangement that Becka, Tim's daughter, feels when she is called to partake in the many things her family does in order to keep her father immobilized and offset his disease. "The Unnamed" will take the reader on a journey that has more questions than answers. What would you do if medical science, in all of its advances, had no answers for you? How far would you go to rearrange your life around the illness of someone you loved? And finally, if you realized there was no hope for recovery, would you be able to leave the people you loved most in the world in order to let them have a better life, free from the constraints of your illness?

About the author

Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came to the End, has been translated into 24 languages. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, and Best American Voices. Ferris was chosen for the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list of fiction writers in 2010. He lives in New York.