Sometimes a book’s categorization is elusive. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the book without trying to make it fit a mold.  To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is just such a book. It’s a little bit syfi, a little bit fantasy, a little bit romance, a little bit mystery and a little bit thriller.  But mostly it is a very interesting story about an ordinary dentist who goes on an existential journey of discovery. Yes, you read that right, it is a story about a dentist-see what I mean about not fitting into any category?

Paul C. O’Rourke is a dentist with a thriving practice on Park Avenue in New York City.  But there is something lacking in his life, or as Paul puts it, “everything was always something, but something-and here was the rub-could not be everything.  A thriving practice couldn’t be everything.  A commitment to healthy patients and an afternoon mochachino and pizza Fridays just couldn’t be everything…The Red Sox had been everything for a long time, but they disappointed me in the end.”  Obviously Paul is having an existential crises but he doesn’t seem to know it yet, and instead, to distract himself he plays a game that he calls “Things Could Be Worse,” as he walks the streets of Manhattan. “Things could be worse,” he says to himself as he sees “parading by everywhere.. the disfigured, the destitute, the hideously ugly the walking weeping, the self scarred, the unappeasably pissed off.” knowing that he could be one of them.  And then he would see a beautiful woman on the street and think to himself, “Things Could Be So Much Better,” which is the corollary to the first part of this game.

One day Paul treats a patient with an infected canine tooth. After the procedure, the man, woozy from the after effects of the gas, tells Paul that he is leaving for Israel, not because he is a Jew but because he is an Ulm, and after thanking  everyone in the office, he leaves. Paul believes that this is when his life changed.

Six months later, Paul’s practice has a new website that neither he nor anyone in his office designed or had asked to be designed.  In fact Paul has a complete aversion to anything internet related and has refused multiple requests by his head hygienist to create such a thing. Feeling violated by having his identity stolen Paul he emails Seir Design who seems to have designed the site, demanding that they remove the website immediately and anxiously awaits a reply. And thus begins the most annoying, baffling and convoluted correspondence which challenges all of Paul’s ideas about himself, who God is, the meaning of existence and how to find something outside himself that could become that “everything” that he is searching for.

Ferris is very good at getting into the mind of a self absorbed, lonely, commitment phobic, fearful and workaholic man. The story is told mostly through Paul’s stream of consciousness; of random thoughts and memories that eventually get tied together to become cohesive.  This style is both satisfying and irritating especially when we start with some event that is going to move the story forward, but we have to make a long detour and become immersed in Paul’s reflections before we know what actually happens.  You have to learn to trust Ferris, because all of this stuff that seems like random garbage is often actually profound and sometimes even fun, like this rant by Paul about the Internet and emoticons:

My relationship with the Internet was like the one I had with the :).  I hated the 🙂 and hated to be the object of other people’s :), their 🙂 and their :>.  I hated ;-)) the most because it reminded me of my double chin. Then there was 😦 and 😦 and 😉 as well as 😉 and *-), which I didn’t even understand, although it was not as mystifying as D:<, or >:O or :-&.  These simplifications of speech, designed by idiots, resulted in hieroglyphics of such compounded complexity that they flew far beyond my intelligence.

Brenda”s Rating: ****(4 Stars out of 5) 

Recommend this book to: Keith, Lauren and Marian

Book study worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.