Ferris' fifth and most dazzling book, which should appeal even to those who never warmed to the other four ... Ferris’s abundant skill has been evident since his debut novel, Then We Came to the End, was published in 2007, but here he has taken a huge leap forward, twisting semi-autobiographical material in such serpentine ways that even the author’s note is devious ... This is a more tender novel than Ferris’s others, but that doesn’t keep it from being murderously funny from start to finish. He can’t help being hilarious, and this material can’t help being tough ... the book zigzags artfully through time, gradually amplifying and modifying each phase of Charlie’s life, in ways that keep it constantly surprising ... There are real people and real wounds buried in here somewhere ... Ferris’s prose remains taut and gorgeous, even when bleak ... give him props for finding precisely the right way to meld memoir with satire, to do this with bracing originality and to keep heads spinning from this novel’s first page to its last. Gamesmanship and love don’t mix easily. But Ferris has found a way to do it, and he’s risen to the top of his game.
Gradually, through sections headed Farce, Fiction and The Facts, the caustic humour that defined Ferris’s previous works is swapped for something grander, more lyrical, attempting to draw a parallel between the modern job of the author and the manner in which we curate our own lives ... The metatextual chaos that ensues, with everyone pitching in their own doubtful versions of 'the truth', is simultaneously narratively courageous and utterly hilarious ... Where it leaves the reader, however, feels special and unique, with the realisation that the value of a person lies not in their 'market worth', or the so-called truth of their story, but in the lies and fictions they tell themselves (and others) to live.
The language of this novel is by turns conversational, comically essayistic and lyrical. The first half of the book, in which Jake constructs a vivid, detailed portrait of Charlie’s life of short-circuited careers and failed marriages, achieves a rollicking momentum. The latter half creates more exquisite pressure with sly subversions and reversals that reveal, in the end, an object our metafictionally erstwhile narrator must teach himself to recognize: an abandoned kid’s broken heart ... To list everything in play in this novel, including societal drift, ideological cleavage, the nature of truth and fiction, the alienation of families, the ravages of capitalism visited even on those who feel they have some agency in the system, might make A Calling for Charlie Barnes sound cluttered. It’s not. Ferris is in shrewd command of his thematic and syntactic trajectories. This novel is a passionate, well-constructed, often hilarious and, at times, profound plunge into grief, both civic and intimate, as well as a culmination (so far) of the literary explorations Ferris has been undertaking since he arrived.
... intriguing and intelligent ... This final section is pure unabashed Vonnegutian whimsy, and Ferris quite clearly revels in just how far he can take his conceit ... There is a feeling while reading A Calling for Charlie Barnes that Joshua Ferris has finally stepped up to the plate. Ferris’s name has rarely been said in the same breath as contemporaries such as Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer and, of course, Joshua Cohen, despite the fact his work has frequently been acclaimed by both the public and prize juries ... A Calling for Charlie Barnes may just be the work that finally wins Ferris his place on the podium. The humour throughout is exquisitely judged, with some passages genuinely eliciting belly laughs. The narrative of poor Charlie Barnes, while reminiscent of a whole host of other novels, does feel fresh and justifiable. And the descent into metafiction, the novel’s true crowingly glory, is extremely well done without ever feeling hammy or clunky, as it often does in less experienced hands ... Ferris can now truly sit back and enjoy the ride. He’s finally done it.
... dazzling ...Ferris' fifth, and best, book ... wears its metafictional heart on its sleeve, but as smart as it is, Ferris never shows any signs of falling in love with his own cleverness. Literary experiments without warmth tend to fall flat for most readers, but Ferris' novel is — remarkably, given its flawed subject — full of heart. When it comes to business, Charlie can't win for losing, but he's a steadfastly lovable character, and when he's hurting, the reader's heart breaks ... In his previous works, Ferris has proved that he's one of the best American authors of comic fiction working today. His humor is on full display with A Calling for Charlie Barnes, but so are his intelligence and compassion; it's a masterpiece that shines a revealing light on both family and fiction itself.
Any novelist is fiercely impelled to give their story a shape, to mould a satisfying journey along which ends are tied and consequences paid out. And yet part of the genius of this shape-shifting fourth novel from the Booker-shortlisted Ferris is that – just like his protagonist Charlie Barnes’s life – it’s a sprawling, confounding mess ... provides a slow-burning clue as to how the novel might flip for the final third. And when it does, it’s hard not to catch your breath in admiration. Because in Ferris’s admirably risk-taking hands, this novel becomes so much more than simply another story of failed American dreams. Ferris has made himself into the leading writer of the American workplace...He understands both its absurdities (and this is another very funny book) and its rewards, but most of all he understands how it shapes modern America.
The challenge of this novel, a comic epic befitting the emperor of all maladies, seems, from the outset, an almost impossible task, especially against the backdrop of economic downturn. It put me in mind of David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel The Pale King (2011), also set in Illinois, a sprawling rhapsody about the minutiae of American taxation and its dehumanizing effects. Perhaps the reason Ferris pulls it off with such aplomb — the novel is exceptionally funny — is that there are no limp gags, no mere zingers. Instead, comedy permeates every line — it is the pulse of the tale ... Much in the same way the first-person plural in Then We Came to the End felt audacious and new, this novel’s drip-feed metafictional arc, with the first person subsuming the third, is similarly inventive. It’s a powerful reminder that contemporary fiction is more than its middling hands ... operating at the highest levels of American fiction. Make it new? Consider the whale harpooned.
Ferris is good on the possible consequences of surgical trauma, charting Charlie’s slow recovery, which includes a temporary psychotic break and extended lack of energy ... It’s difficult to understand why Ferris felt the need to create the fiction of Charlie’s post-operative life—and then to negate that fiction. If life is cruel (plenty of evidence in the novel), should the novelist be cruel to the reader to represent life? ... Charlie Barnes suggests that the novelist driven to be a desperate double-dealer of cruelty is the limit case of the desperation that Ferris has written about in his earlier novels. If you can tolerate this kind of novelistic sadism, there is plenty to like in Charlie Barnes ... Ferris well represents the competition and conflicts of Jake’s siblings, none of whom sees the goodness in their father that Jake does ... It’s difficult to imagine where Ferris can go after the essential nihilism of A Calling for Charlie Barnes ... It’s the function of novelists to create illusions. But here is my bottom-line objection to A Calling for Charlie Barnes: Ferris does not persuade me that humans, whether characters or real, can live only by adopting illusions.
Ferris does something fascinating in this book: He evokes a distinctive family in all its complications while also calling into question every description he gives, every character he presents ... A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a tour de force about failure and success, connection and isolation, about how we shape our lives by the stories we tell about them, and ultimately, how stories redeem us. That’s a lot of weight for one novel to carry, but Ferris deftly pulls it off, proving 'the power you have when you control the narrative.'
... ceaselessly funny-wistful ... As Charlie sets out to try to realize one last great idea, Ferris, a faultless crafter of sentences, imbues him with archetypically American never-say-uncle ambition in the face of grim odds ... a riotous bildungsroman for the squinty-eyed, its delivery system a hilariously unreliable narrator who has a vested interest in Charlie's fights, for success and for life.
It is to Ferris’s credit that he simultaneously explores these subjects and provides the kind of absorbing account of a life that used to suffice on its own in simpler times ... Ferris could write enthralling realist fiction in his sleep but it’s the ideas and formal ingenuity that really set this novel apart ... He captures the way some families exclude, as well as include, their members ... More than once I thought I had misunderstood a passage then reread it and realised Ferris had pulled off an about-turn ... He breaks the kind of rules that used to be prescribed in creative writing classes, introducing significant new characters late on, densely populating scenes and taking risks that could leave the reader feeling betrayed ... 'No two persons ever read the same book,' said the American critic Edmund Wilson. Reactions to Ferris’s ultimately affecting novel may vary widely, but that feels apt ... By telling Charlie’s story, and depicting others’ conflicting perceptions of him, Ferris left me wondering whether two people ever know the same man.
This isn’t an overtly political novel, or state of the nation novel – it’s a family story – but history is its background music ... What gives this novel its special tenderness and torque – and later supplies a series of rug-pulling metafictional surprises – is its framing ... This novel is funny – Ferris has lovely comic timing and a great way with the sheer silliness of a family’s mental and physical bric-a-brac – and very moving. At times it tips over into outright sentimentality, only for that to emerge as part of the book’s design; a weakness not of Ferris’s but of Jake Barnes. This is the story of one disappointed idealist told by another, of one unreliable narrator described by another, and it is animated by filial love. Attention is being paid.
... often reads like a wild search for hope in the face of bleak reality ... the plot more or less becomes nonsensical: I cannot in good conscience recommend the final act of this book. But Ferris’s central idea—that fiction offers the fantasy of escape from mortality—remains both convincing and clear. It’s hard not to sympathize when Jake, hating his efforts at autofiction, starts yearning for 'new adventures, happy ends.' Who doesn’t want to pretend death isn’t coming for us all? ... [a] messy, bighearted book that prioritize[s] emotional searching.
... a poignant, bitingly funny exploration of how a life that’s riddled with defeat may turn out, after all, to be profoundly meaningful ... Ferris’ control of his own narrative is impeccable, but that doesn’t mean readers shouldn’t be prepared for the frequent wicked curveballs he delivers with evident zest. A Calling for Charlie BarnesRead Full Review >>
Ferris writes with an exuberant style that propels the reader, regardless of the plot ... If we’re not confused by the end, we’re resentful at being manipulated — and perhaps for reading about someone who wasn’t worth our time and attention. But I worry that Ferris is less concerned with his narrative than his idea, which, admittedly, is an incisive critique of contemporary culture ... as A Calling for Charlie Barnes shows, fiction is an art form deliberately used to get to a deeper truth than fact. It’s not a denial of reality, but a more serious journey into it.
Ferris is a sharp, observant writer with a gift for worrying at the ills that afflict a certain stripe of contemporary American life ... this is a relentlessly self-reflective book; but the shifting flow of storytelling draws attention to its own games in what becomes, finally, a wearying and predictable way. If you had missed the point that Charlie Barnes is an Updikean figure, not to worry: you’ll be told ... There is a curious heartlessness here. It is like a novel written from the perspective of a drone, all scope and no detail. There is no character in this novel who seems to live or breathe: the author has a get-out clause for that...But we are told that Jake’s book is unfinished, so that’s fine. If you are unsatisfied by what you are reading, the joke’s on you ... Charlie can’t surprise us or move us because, simply put, he never gains the sense of agency that is the novelist’s true gift; he acts at the whim of his creator, no more. For a satire, it’s surprising that Ferris missed an opportunity to test Charlie in a manner that would have been revealing. This is not a realist novel, but Charlie’s cancer treatment must surely have been awfully expensive, especially for someone so close to broke. We don’t hear anything about that; there would have been rich material there ... A critic can’t ask that a novelist write a wholly different book; yet the lack of any mention of the cost of healthcare in 21st-century America seems peculiar. A Calling for Charlie Barnes never quite rises to its ambitions; it feels more like a game than a matter of life and death.
Ferris spins a pleasantly whiplashy yarn of family legends and fatherly delusions that’s at the same time a metacommentary on fiction itself: Can there be truth in it? Who does it belong to? And what’s the point anyway? Both fantastical and brutally realistic, this is a funny, tender, and excitingly unexpected novel of familial fictions.
I think that A Calling for Charlie Barnes would be an incredibly funny book if it didn’t come out as the world around us crumbles and struggles to reform itself into something resembling anything. In fact, like Updike’s Rabbit quartet, it solidifies one type of white man’s experience in a world that is now immersed in showing its underbelly ... The supposed pot of gold doesn’t anchor the end of anything, let alone a rainbow, and the payback for a lifetime of behaving yourself is the biggest letdown one can experience. Charlie Barnes is yet another totem that takes up the compelling idea that bucking the system and finding your own way of perceiving those normal slights and punishments is the true success story ... Joshua Ferris is a no-nonsense writer with a sharp, witty style that pulls you through the novel quickly and efficiently. If A Calling for Charlie Barnes has anything to give us during this difficult time of uproar and dissent, it is his overwhelming optimism that a life lived is still being lived and recreated well past what society considers the proper expiration date.
Despite the heavy subject matter, the story is often quite funny, and the themes at its core are those that will forever preoccupy humankind: purpose and death, but, mostly, love. Of Ferris’s work, this is the big kahuna.
