The Unnamed

{{short description|2010 novel by Joshua Ferris}}

{{for|the 2016 Bangladeshi film|The Unnamed (film)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{infobox book |

| name = The Unnamed

| image = File:TheUnnamed.jpg

| caption = First edition (US)

| author = Joshua Ferris

| illustrator =

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| country = United States

| language = English

| series =

| genre =

| publisher = Reagan Arthur (US)
Penguin (UK)

| release_date = 2010 (US), 2011 (UK)

| english_release_date =

| media_type = Print

| pages = 313

| isbn = 0-316-03401-0

| dewey =

| congress =

| oclc =

| preceded_by =

| followed_by =

}}

The Unnamed is the second novel by American novelist Joshua Ferris, published in 2010.

Plot summary

The story begins in New York City where Tim Farnsworth, a successful trial attorney and partner in a law firm, apparently with everything going for him, happily married with a teenage daughter, is struck by an uncontrollable urge to walk, and keep walking. He seeks medical and psychiatric help but his illness, which comes in episodes normally months apart, cannot be explained. He tries to keep his job and family together but this becomes increasingly difficult, until in the end he walks out on both.

Reception

Culture Critic assessed critical response as an aggregated score of 65%.{{Cite web |title=Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall|url=http://www.culturecritic.co.uk/books/joshua-ferris-the-unnamed/|access-date=12 July 2024|website=Culture Critic|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100212202825/http://www.culturecritic.co.uk:80/books/joshua-ferris-the-unnamed/|archive-date=12 Feb 2010}} The BookScore assessed it an aggregated score of 7.4 out of 10 based on press reviews.{{Cite web |title=The Unnamed|url=http://thebookscore.net/browse.php?p=8&dir=down|access-date=12 July 2024|website=The BookScore|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130110181903/http://thebookscore.net/browse.php?p=8&dir=down|archive-date=10 Jan 2013}} In the March/April 2010 issue of Bookmarks, the book was scored 2.5 out of 5 stars. The magazine's critical summary reads: "Ferris’s intentions are as vague and elusive as the diagnosis for Tim’s baffling illness".{{Cite web |title=The Unnamed By Joshua Ferris|url=http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/book-review/unnamed/joshua-ferris|access-date=14 January 2023 |website=Bookmarks|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905174925/http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com:80/book-review/unnamed/joshua-ferris|archive-date=5 Sep 2015}} Reviews were mixed :

  • Tim Adams of The Guardian describes the novel as "somewhat unnerving", but concludes positively "The result is a kind of existential journey that is not wholly removed from Cormac McCarthy's The Road, though Ferris has none of McCarthy's apocalypticism, just a mundane and original understanding that whatever we might tell ourselves to the contrary, our biology will sooner or later remove us from the things we hold most dear".[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/21/the-unnamed-joshua-ferris The hero of this unnerving parable about love keeps walking out on his wife, writes Tim Adams – but it's not his fault]
  • Tim Martin in The Daily Telegraph writes "The Unnamed can be tough to read because of the skill Ferris brings to his evocation of suffering, particularly in its final pitiless chapters, but it is clearly an important and individual work, a stage in the development of a significant talent."[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7214253/The-Unnamed-by-Joshua-Ferris-review.html Tim Martin follows a compulsive walker in Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed, from the author of Then We Came to the End]
  • Jay McInerney in The New York Times complains that "Tim’s travels don’t really take him anywhere, literally or figuratively, until finally he makes a concerted effort to return to New York ... to return to Jane, who is dying of cancer. When he visits her in the hospital in between walks, she is astonished to find how little he notices on his travels. He finally starts to observe the world around him so that he can share the details with her, but for this reader, it’s too little, way too late ... As a fan of Then We Came to the End I can admire Ferris’s earnest attempt to reinvent himself, but I can’t wait for him to return to the kind of thing at which he excels"{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/books/review/McInerney-t.html?pagewanted=all|title = Long March|newspaper = The New York Times|date = 22 January 2010|last1 = McInerney|first1 = Jay}}
  • Robert Epstein in The Independent was also negative saying that a reader "might be forgiven for wondering why it is they have just read 300-plus pages – unless they enjoy a good existential disquisition on despair, of course".[https://web.archive.org/web/20110214210650/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-unnamed-by-joshua-ferris-1902650.html Joshua Ferris follows up 'Then We Came to the End' by trailing a man for whom the end is never in sight]

References