Then we came to the end By Joshua Ferris
Penguin, £2.99

For some of us, complaining about work is second nature. We bemoan the long hours, the nine-to-five drudgery; we are hounded by deadlines, beset with anxieties. We turn and turn in the widening mire of self-pity. Some become obsessive-compulsive whiners. Gregor Samsa, for example. He might have turned into a wriggling insect one fine day, but that didn't stop him from sulking about his job.

Joshua Ferris's first novel is about the tedium of working life. He sets his story in a high-profile ad agency in Chicago, among a group of eccentric employees - 'fractious and overpaid', and alternating between spells of hyperactivity and inactivity. Business or no business, Lent or carnival, the only constant factor in their lives is ennui: 'Our boredom was ongoing, a collective boredom, and it would never die because we would never die.' But life has no time for such witticisms. The boredom goes away, and people kick the bucket.

In comes excitement - in the form of nervous breakdowns, anxiety attacks and mass hysteria - as people are laid off one by one. The survivors, tremulous with apprehension, but resolutely in denial, come up with ingenuous phrases for getting fired: 'he'd gotten the axe, she's been sacked, they'd all been shitcanned', and finally, 'walking Spanish down the hall' picked out of the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins. There is morbid gossiping about the dead and the dying. Does Lynne Mason, the boss, really have breast cancer? What does Janine Gorjanc, who lost her nine-year-old daughter to a psychopath, do in McDonald's during lunch hour? How did Brizz, who smoked like an insane chimney, vanish into thin air?

Those who 'walk Spanish' invariably go mad. Carl Garbedian steals Janine's anti-depressants because he wants to deny his ever-busy oncologist wife the pleasure of knowing that she's been right, yet again: yes, he might indeed be depressive, but he would never let her feel triumphant. Tom Mota has not only to deal with a sordid divorce, but also a serious anger management problem. He pulverizes his house with a baseball bat, freaks out on Emerson, and sends bizarre emails with subject lines like 'I need a Wetter Mare'. Finally he returns, dressed as a clown with a red nose, and pellets everyone with fake bullets. Of course, people take him completely seriously, they writhe in agony as the shootout begins. Finally, there is Chris Yop, who believes in and spreads the semi-convincing rumour that he's been thrown out because he stole Tom Mota's chair. So he cannot rest until he has sneaked back into the building, taken apart 'his' chair piece by piece, then dumped everything into Lake Michigan.

There are surprises. Everybody's 'favourite whipping boy', Jim Jackers, becomes the boss. Not in the next life, but rather in his next job. And to think that he was once the idiot boy, openly referring to his bowels as 'Mr B' ('But Mr B's making it happen again!'). Hank Neary, the failed copywriter, finally comes up with his elusive novel. His ex-colleagues 'were proud, astounded, envious, incredulous, vaguely indifferent, ready to seize on the first hint of mediocrity, and genuinely pleased for him'. Something mysterious happens to Joe, who was always beyond reproach, holier-than-the-rest. 'We' - the choric voice that tells the story - doesn't know what. Only a chilling suspicion lingers on.

This is a comic tour de force, à la Woody Allen, that begins and ends perhaps a bit abruptly. But along this rambling journey we are stirred by the lyrical prose and left giggling madly in fits and starts.