Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy!

Unfortunately, this was not for me. I was unable to get past the first few chapters. I believe this is just an issue of my taste not aligning with the story. I recommend others try it!

The average person wouldn't consider Charlies Barnes' life a success. He has been married five times and divorced four. He has three children but only has a relationship with one of them. He has constantly drifted from job to job, often get-rich schemes that only last a while and then fail.

Now he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the worst kinds. He is facing an early death at age sixty-nine and not ready to go. He calls and informs family and friends and his youngest son, an author, rallies and comes home to take care of Charlie. Is this Charlie's end? When his son writes a book about Charlie's life, everything and everyone is upset.

Readers will find themselves liking Charlie in spite of himself. Although he was a terrible husband with a roving eye, he also was always there for his children, taking them into his home without a murmur when their living situations got bad. Although he wasn't successful in business, he tried to make sure no one else was hurt. He is willing to do anything for his current wife, Barbara Two, even though she doesn't care for any of his children. Charlie is a dreamer and sometimes dreams come true. This book is recommended for literary fiction readers interested in family relationships.

Surprising and undeniably touching. You can’t help but fall for the charms of each in this complicated family, but Charlie, for all his foibles, wins our hearts. Highly recommended.

A fun and funny book that really strives to pull at the heart strings while also making you think. It is absurd and interesting, but not for everyone.

This was a good read. I initially did have some issues with the way in which the story was told but as I thought about it, I found it necessary to the overall theme of the book.

This is a well written book, but it doesn't hold a candle to "And Then We Came to the End". It has a clever, meta, structure, some fine lines, a few well-conceived set pieces, a fair share of perceptive and insightful observations, and some lean dialogue. That said, try as I might I found neither the characters nor the overall narrative engaging enough to arouse or hold my curiosity and attention, or to excuse the long self-indulgent stretches. As a consequence, it doesn't seem fair to write much more of a review, apart from encouraging interested readers to give the book a try.

Gosh, it took me months to finish this book. I'd start and stop. I'd get confused and/or lost and have to start over. And that's never a good sign.

But I kept reading amazing reviews and decided to start over completely. And I'm so glad I did! Otherwise I would have missed the humor, the nuance, the wit and the wisdom of Charlie Barnes (the dad) and the narrator (his son). Truth be told, I also listened to the audiobook, narrated by the hilariously dry author, actor, crafter and producer, Nick Offerman. And it was a great package...the ebook with the audio.

I recommend this for those who will take their time and not speed-read. It requires a bit more brain power, but it's worth it!

Special thanks to Little, Brown and Company for the advanced reader copy of the book via the NetGalley app.

This clever novel starts out masquerading as pure comedy, before morphing into a more serious drama about an unusually fractured family. The narrator is Jake Barnes, who has his own particular origin story that the reader learns about in careful installments. Then, towards the end, Jake the writer looks upon what he has written, and the story becomes the story of the story of Charles Barnes, a metastory.

Let me back up, though. Charles Barnes has been married multiple times, tried on many lives, involving some hilarious get-rich-quick schemes. However, poor Chuck’s general direction, financially, is downward, owing to the funny, delusional choices he makes. At the age of sixty-eight, he has four children, with whom he has complicated relationships, owing to divorcing their mothers and finally settling down with a woman none of them like. Oh, I should mention that these wives have Dickensian last names. That’s a nice touch.

The important, poignant thing about this story is the love and gratitude Jake has for Charles Barnes, a man who feels like a failure. Charles has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer before finding his calling, without doing what he set out to do. So, Jake attempts to breathe new life into his story, and gives him a better ending. However, this does not go as well as Jake would’ve liked, and that’s when he enlightens us about how he has controlled the narrative. The reader gets to peek behind the scenes, and it’s an unusual experience.

Joshua Ferris’s writing is smart and engaging. This is the first of his novels I’ve read, and I was impressed. I would definitely recommend this, and will happily read his work again.

Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for this opportunity.

"It just goes to show you, the power you have when you control the narrative".

This novel is laugh out loud funny and sweet and poignant and full of familial hurts. Charlie Barnes is a flawed, ok, highly flawed man capable of great love for family, friends and wives. We get to delight in his get rich quick schemes, the ideas that go nowhere but seemed plausible at the time, at least to Charlie. We watched him divorce woman after woman until he finally found someone that loved him with warts and all, which love didn't necessarily extend to his children. When the book opens, Charlie has self-diagnosed himself with 'the big kahuna' of cancers, pancreatic. He makes phone call after phone call to share. He tries to reconnect with his estranged children. His son Jake, is there, the others, you will just have to see. If you are under the delusion that your childhood memories are accurate, this book will dissuade you of your provincial notion.

Ferris is witty, wry, and full of compassion for human frailty. This books takes you on a couple of very curvy roads that you didn't see coming. Just go with it. It is worth it.

I will admit, I was on the fence about this book. I couldn't really get a clear sense of what the book was really about before starting to read it. But I was pleasantly surprised by what this book is after fully reading it. The writing is sharp, funny and kept me intrigued. This was my first book by Joshua Ferris and I will definitely check out the previous books.

A Calling for Charlie Barnes is so unique, while it may not have all been "for me" I can so appreciate what Ferrir was doing here, and he did it well.

"Yeah, right. Like reliability exists anywhere anymore, like that's still a thing."

It wasn't until its final third that I realized just how twisty and metafictional this novel was, because I was so busy being entertained by Ferris' energetic and razor-sharp comic prose, which pierces the absurdity of early-21st-century American life. Just when I thought Ferris had all the pieces of the narrative locked in place, and when I was certain of the basic facts, he reshuffles the puzzle into an entirely different shape. The effect is shocking, but also deeply moving, probing all of the awkward places and unspoken hurt in a dysfunctional father-son relationship.

In the novel's first section, Farce, Jake Barnes, a (possibly) famous novelist in his mid-40s, has novelized the worst morning in the life of his father. Charlie is a washed-up Midwestern American failure at 68, with a failing money-management business and a million failed get-rick-quick schemes and short stints as a salesman behind him. It's the fall of 2008, with the country on the brink of a massive financial crisis.

On his fifth (or maybe fourth) marriage and alienated from his (at least) three thoroughly messed-up adult children, Charlie picks up the phone in the basement of his dumpy suburban Chicagoland house to hear a certain death sentence: a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Ferris keeps multiple plates spinning, refusing any kind of resolution or certainty, ramping up the tension and bleakness as Charlie calls the important people in his life, seeking consolation and sympathy he might not deserve. Will the kids believe this chronic hypochondriac enough to want to repair their relationship with him? Is the diagnosis a real thing, or just a Googled self-diagnosis?

In the second section, Fiction, Jake moves back into his father's house to assist his hated stepmother with the nursing duties while Charlie undergoes surgery and chemo. He writes one possible life-story for his restless father, piecing together what he thinks he knows of the details of Charlie's marriages, divorces, and his manifold failures as a parent and businessman. But Jake's reliability as a narrator is self-undermining, and increasingly questionable.

Especially after Charlie becomes the luckiest man alive, (possibly but maybe not) surviving a near-death sentence to enjoy a second act of successful American life. After Jake shares the first section of this novel with his family members, all of whom are incredulous, shocked, and hurt by just how deceitful and judgmental this version of events really is. In the third and final section, Facts, we finally realize that Jake simply can't be trusted with anything, destabilizing everything we thought we knew about him and Charlie.

Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown for giving me a free ARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

This wasn’t for me. The narrative style of the protagonist really got on my nerves - not charming, not funny, just endless whining and self-pity. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Great book about Charlie Barnes, the decisions he has made and where they have led him. Enough twists and turns to keep you interested until the end.

Charlie Barnes is 68 years old and he is sharing with his family that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the worst of all cancers. Married four times, he’s a character who is never satisfied. Between the cancer and the great recession, how does Charlie feels about his own story? But then his son, a storyteller, begins to curate the story of his father’s life and the narrative asks, in what ways can revision redeem someone? Flawed characters, unreliable narration, humor, plot twists, this was an enjoyable read from a talented writer.

This novel has a frenetic energy which could either attract or repel a reader based on mood, expectation, and openness of mind. For me, the characters (based on the author's real life) are too much. And the narrative voice is a distraction. Where in And Then We Came to the End the first person plural enhanced the book, in this novel it doesn't gel.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

Joshua Ferris takes his readers on a metafictional journey focusing on his dying father, his father's umpteen wives, his siblings, and relatives, at times injecting himself as not only the narrator, but the narrator who is telling a true story about himself and his father. When the father is in his later 60's, he learns he has pancreatic cancer, then that he doesn't have it, then that he does, and the novel more or less continues on this same rhythm. Our narrator is a foster son, or not a foster son, but he is an author and he does name drop his own book. As we follow Jake, the narrator, as he tries to get his sister to believe their father is dying and insisting that she visit, and the siblings and former wives are weary of the father's fabrications and distance, Jake decides to write a novel about his father, a novel that is half-finished when the book ends, but has angered the relatives who have read the novel, accusing Jake of being a fraud like their father.

Most of the time, the novel is a lively, enjoyable read--at times quite funny, other times rather melancholy. When we reach the final chapter titled "Facts," readers are still not certain what is true and what isn't, which is the author's intent, and by this point, what is truth doesn't really matter, since we've completed the novel and are left with what we want to believe.

This is a powerful story about the modern American family. After a life full of more downs than ups, Charlie Barnes seems to be entering his final chapter as he faces a serious medical diagnosis. This prompts him to reach out to the various figures that have played critical roles in his life -- his children, his brother, his mother, his former business associates, and even his mechanic -- and reflect on those relationships and the role they played in the arc of his life. Through these reflections, the author explores the complex nature of family relationships, what success means, and how we tell our own stories.

I really enjoyed the author's previous books, so I was excited about this one. And it delivered! The book was insightful and often surprising. Highly recommended.

This is a terrific book. It tells the story of Charlie Barnes and his family, made up of his current wife, several ex-wives, and his children from these various marriages. As we learn about Charlie's life, we see that reality often fell short of his hopes and expectations, for his romantic relationships, his connections with his children, and his professional aspirations. Just when things look the most bleak, though, it seems like Charlie may finally achieve everything he has longed wished for -- but not everyone agrees with the story Charlie is telling others or himself.

This was an intriguing story, with an impactful examination of family life and what success means. Strongly recommend!

A tad funny, sad, introspective, and non-traditional. This is a book you have to be in the mood for.

Not quite sure what I was expecting here based on the premise, although this wasn't exactly it. The character of Charlie Barnes, was at times, deep, and wholly sad and sometimes laugh out loud funny. At times it was like his character was having an identity crisis.

While I really wanted to like this, unfortunately, it simply wasn't for me and I therefore realized that I am the wrong reader for this novel.