Fiction Addict

Genre: Psychological, Literary

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: January 2010

Reviewed by Marianne Peters

Tim Farnsworth seems to be a lucky man, with a wife and daughter, a thriving law practice, and a large home in the suburbs. Lucky except for one thing: periodically, inexplicably, he begins to walk.  He walks until he collapses, and then his wife Jane comes to find him wherever he has ended up, asleep, sometimes frostbitten or injured. After he sleeps, the walking starts again. He sees doctors, psychologists, even gurus, but no one can fix his problem. To explain his absences from work, he tells his puzzled partners at the law firm that his wife has terminal cancer.

Joshua Ferris, author of the novel Then We Came to the End, has penned a heartbreaking story about a family in the midst of a mysterious health crisis. Farnsworth’s illness is never named or cured. It goes into sudden remission, and then starts up again just as suddenly. While he copes with the distressing realities of walking himself into exhaustion, his wife Jane and daughter Becka cope with their own fear, guilt, anger and frustration – ambivalent feelings that would be familiar to anyone caring for a chronically ill loved one.

Tim and Jane Farnsworth also struggle to maintain their affection for each other, playing out their roles as husband and wife, but also as impaired person and caregiver. When does he decide to abandon treatment? When does she decide that enough is enough?

The Unnamed is not a cheery read, but it is a mesmerizing one. Joshua Ferris’ lucid writing lifts his characters from the page until they are flesh and blood, and we find ourselves asking, would I do the same thing? Would I give up or hang on? The walking itself is a device, the difficult circumstance that allows these characters to demonstrate their strengths and their loyalties, while simultaneously forcing them to expose their weaknesses to themselves and to each other. The truth about them – about us – is painful, but redemptive. We all have weaknesses that hardship will reveal. And once everything is revealed, the only thing left to do is to keep walking.

Review copy provided by Little, Brown and Company.