Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris explores the absurdities of modern life and one man's search for meaning. Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual. At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.

What was clear in our discussion was that Ferris hit on a great theme in his novel. The plight of Paul, a dentist who finds his identity has been stolen and then finds himself caught up in a splinter religious group that causes him to re-investigate his relationship with his beliefs, his deceased father, and his desire for meaning. The most interesting aspect of the book is the question of what identities one is allowed to adopt. The desire Paul expresses to be Jewish to be part of something becomes a fascinating question of what identity is -- can you adopt an identity by being loyal to its tenets? Can suffering be adopted? Or are you automatically excluded from certain identities no matter how much work you put in and desire you have? These are simply fascinating questions that Ferris raises in a number of incarnations -- from the question of a stolen virtual identity to the creation of a new anti-religion that assumes a made-up narrative of its own persecution (which turns out to be a very prescient vision on Ferris part, given incels and gamergate). Ferris also writes Paul very well, and you get a good sense of the character's contradictions and need for something to hold on to. All of these elements imply a very good book, but none of us at NUBClub said they loved it. Something in Ferris's depiction of Paul left us wanting, and while the quest he went on to discover what faith or anti-faith he could accept and be accepted in was very interesting to us intellectually, we didn't feel an emotional connection to Paul's story or any of the groups he encounters on the way. Perhaps it's a consequence of the identity exploration and challenges in the book that we never could land well on who Paul was or feel too deeply with his longing. Maybe it was clear to us all along that the only solution was for Paul to accept himself, so the resolution of the book didn't hold any surprises. I don't think we really understood why we didn't like the novel more, but NUBClub was clearly in agreement that it was a pretty good, not great book. Our advice is for you to give it a read -- Ferris certainly knows how to write and has picked a very compelling theme -- the key question is whether he can harvest an emotionally compelling story from the rich terrain he's laid out.