There are very few books where the agony and pain of the characters haunts you enough to keep you awake at night. It happened to me just twice before – with Saleem Senai in The Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. And with Florentino Ariza in Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris was the third one. It is definitely one of the most provocative (and somewhat unnerving) books about marriage love and relationships.

Tim Farnsworth and his wife Jane are a successful and happy couple – he is a successful your attorney in a prestigious law firm, she is a real estate agent. They love are care about each other, live a comfortable live in a seven bedroom flat and have a lovely teenage daughter. What wreaks havoc in their life is Tim’s “condition” – he suffers from bouts of unexplained, uncontrollable urges to walk. And when the “attack” comes he has to drop everything, walkout and just keep walking till the time he is so tired that he passes out.

Even with all it weirdness, at a very basic level it can be the story of any two people who love each other. Tim’s “condition” is a metaphor for anything – anything which, even with best intentions, is uncontrollable and how it affects a relationship. Herein lies the beauty of this story!

The Unnamed is a remarkable book, and has been rightly called as the “First Great Book of the Decade” by GQ.

Joshua Ferris’s third book – To Rise Again at a Decent Hour was shortlisted for 2014 Man Booker Prize. See my review here

Bonus Material:

The Unnamed “Trailer”

Joshua Ferris discusses “The Unnamed” with Asylum’s Anthony Layser.