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    To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
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    To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
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    To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
    Audiobook9 hours

    To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

    Written by Joshua Ferris

    Narrated by Campbell Scott

    3/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

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    About this audiobook

    Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014

    Paul O'Rourke is a man out of touch with modern life. While his dental practice occupies his days, his nights are filled with darker thoughts, as he alternately marvels at and rails against the optimism of the rest of humanity. So it goes, until someone begins to impersonate Paul online. What began as an outrageous violation of privacy soon becomes something far more soul-frightening: the possibility that the virtual 'Paul' might be a better version…
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateOct 23, 2014
    ISBN9781471283963
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

    3/5

    350 ratings48 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I thought it was going to be, in the words of Wodehouse, "one long scream from start to finish." Certainly the first 100 pages nearly lived up to the Stephen King plug on the back, which said it was almost "the Catch-22 of dentistry." I hugely enjoyed first-person narrator Paul O'Rourke's curmudgeonly interior monologue and his hilarious propensity to find something negative about everything and everyone. Paul's take on technology and the internet, in particular, was hysterically funny. High humor, too, was his take on codependent relationships, for which his terminology was too profane to repeat in a polite book review.However, Paul went on some kind of religious journey, despite being an atheist. These sorts of pilgrimages invariably bore me to death, and I struggled through some very long passages of holy writings from some ethnic religious cult called the Ulms (a bizarre dental patient of Paul's insisted that Paul was an Ulm, then stole Paul's identity and created a web/social media presence for him to spread the Ulmish gospel in Paul's name). About three-fourths of the way through I stopped laughing and began puzzling over what, exactly, was supposed to be happening to Paul and what some random, purportedly also-Ulmish billionaire had to do with it.As with so many humorous novels, it spun out of control just after the middle, and not in a funny way which suggested the author had the narrative well in hand. The ending seemed odd, as in, "Ah, so that's where Paul was headed." The ending wasn't forced, exactly, but it didn't seem to grow sensibly from a denouement. The latter fourth of the book was pretty much a muddle. I think the author was trying to get at something profound about a human need for something akin to a religious tradition or a "people" to belong to without necessarily subscribing to a religion--the Jewish tradition being the best of these, since it is an ethnic tradition. I am not sure what that something was that the author was trying to say, however.
    • 4/5
      Gosh, what to say about this book. At first, I could only read this novel in small spurts because the sentences and paragraphs ran on and on, and I kept losing my focus. Then I sort of got the rhythm and found myself enjoying the story. I gave up trying to figure out everything the author was trying to say, and simply went along for the ride. Being a Baby Boomer, I identified the story as being from the viewpoint of a Millennium so it made it easier to follow and I took it less seriously than my initial reaction. Read it yourself and be the judge.
    • 3/5
      3.5.

      This is an odd mess of a book - it starts out light and funny as you get to know Paul O'Rourke, the slightly misanthropic and befuddled dentist who is the main character. There are regular jokes and witty moments as Ferris introduces the various characters and then, within a matter of a chapter or two, you find yourself immersed in a dense, sad and frustrating book about loneliness, religion, belonging and family. It's big, heavy stuff. Ferris is a wonderful writer and I was engaged most of the way through - the diversions into the history of the Amelakites and Ulms sometimes left me flagging a bit. There's a lot to chew on here but it doesn't feel like the book quite fits together - after being blown away by Ferris' first book (And Then We Came to the End), I'm still waiting for him to come up with the modern classic that his talent and ambition suggest he has in him.
    • 3/5
      Not bad and kept me reading. Paul O?Rourke is a mess. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour focuses on the world, society, religion and baseball. Paul wants to fit in the world but he can?t understand it. Basically Paul avoids having an internet presence and only uses it to check up on the Red Sox until someone makes a website for his dental practice and post about religion. He is pissed and wants to know why this is happening and by who, which he does find out, he is an Ulm. Most of the book focuses on what an Ulm is, his connection, whether or not it is a hoax and just him getting sucked more and more into it.This isn?t the first time he tried to find a place, he dated an employee of his and fell in love with Judaism. He loved the customs, the history and the sense of family, but he?s an atheist. Paul doesn?t understand why someone born into Judaism can be an atheist and a Jew, but not him (become a Jew while being atheist). He?s spending more time corresponding with people posting under his identity being consumed by it and people become concern over the statements his fake online self are saying. He just wants to figure out if there is any truth to what he is being told about the Ulms and himself.

      This book makes you think about religion vs family/tradition while being humorous. For a book about society, religion, doubt, and faith it?s not preachy or favoring one opinion over the other. It is respectful. It?s also not a heavy read, its light and the plot moves along well, but it is still complex. I did feel like there was something missing towards the end, it gets jumbled up. It was going in all kinds of directions and circling around a message that wasn?t fully formed.
    • 3/5
      Some fabulous, innovative writing. Did it just bother me that the last word of the book was 'heaven' or was it really an odd ending?
    • 3/5
      Like a lot of people, I really enjoyed Joshua Ferris's "Then We Came to the End," but I had some misgivings when I purchased this one, his follow-up novel. His decision to use a first-person plural narrator in that novel worked out really well, but was it just a gimmick? And the middle portion of that book, in which the author played it much straighter, wasn't that novel's strongest section. Maybe this guy was a one-hit wonder. It turns out that "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour" isn't a bad novel, but I'm not sure it's a really good novel, either. At least it's different, both structurally and thematically, from his big hit. Where "When We Came to the End" explored the relatively flimsy bonds we form at work, this novel describes the much stronger bonds we form through family and community. It relates the adventures of Paul C. O'Rourke, DDS, spiritual seeker and very lonely man. Dr. O'Rourke, a nonbeliever who was raised in a small, unhappy family desperately craves kinship with others, and takes as his models the families of two ex-girlfriends, one Catholic and the other Jewish, the latter of which still works as his receptionist. One of his dental hygienists is a practicing RC and has that angle covered. One day a mysterious website appears in his name and, after some investigation, Paul discovers he may be the descendant of a long-lost tribe of what I can only call aggressive agnostics, which more or less turns his world upside-down. Frankly, I feel that how much you'll like this book probably depends on how much you like Dr. O'Rourke. His voice -- intelligent, sarcastic, emotionally helpless -- more or less dominates the novel, for good or ill. He is, in the tradition of dozens of Woody Allen characters, a verbose neurotic who seems to be able to provide exacting descriptions of all of his problems. His business is successful but his life is inhibited and regimented to the point of utter tedium. He's the kind of Red Sox fan who tapes every game and watches every pitch the next day. I think that there's sort of a verisimilitude problem here: most depressed people I know -- and most people who search for answers to the Big Questions, I expect -- tend to be less organized and driven than average, not more. And even though I'm a Red Sox fan myself and know for a fact that Ferris gets all of his team lore exactly right, I'm not sure if this facet of the book isn't a little too cutesy. There's some good storytelling here, especially toward the end, and some likable characters, and some sharp observation, too. There's also a lot about dentistry, and funnily enough, these bits might be the novel's most enjoyable parts. Ferris has obviously done his research, and the way that Dr. O'Rourke thinks about teeth, which shows both scientific rigor and the light touch of a true craftsman, actually makes dental work seem exciting, even vitally alive. Ferris hasn't lost his touch for clever dialogue -- he suggests that some of the arguments about religion that the characters engage in here have been repeated so many times that we really need hear only one side of them to understand what's going on. Maybe there's issues that comic novelists -- even clever comic novelists like Ferris -- should leave alone.Except that I kind of think that "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour" does make some good points. The alienation and yearning to belong that Dr. O'Rourke, an innate nonbeliever and not much of a joiner,feels seems convincing, and the book might be said to revolve around whether he could possibly achieve the sense of belonging and love that many religious people feel without faith in something. Can you make a faith out of doubt and intellectual probity? Is faith really necessary for happiness? By the time the book ends, Ferris seems to have ably demonstrated how even the nonbelievers among us are forced to take a lot about our existence on faith. Well, the novel makes some other points, too, but maybe you get the picture. In short, this novel has its strong points, but I'm not convinced it's as successful as the author's blockbuster. Dr. O'Rourke might call it a sophomore slump.
    • 2/5
      I have read Then We Came to the End by this author and really liked it. But this novel does not measure up even though it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. This is a dense and repetitive novel. There were times when I asked myself: "Where's this going?" and "What's the point?" I found it boring and tiring with unlikable characters.The irritating protagonist, Paul, is a successful New York City dentist whose identity is stolen online. He is shocked that something like this can happen and tries to deal with it, very unsuccessfully. Paul is obsessive, weird, lonely, and wants to belong to society, but doesn't have a clue. He is a fanatic Red Sox fan and an atheist who is searching for religion. That search becomes an obsession and the result is the uninteresting subplot. For me, his search was all over the place and it was confusing at times.The first 50 pages were interesting but it went downhill from there. In fairness to the author, there were some amusing moments.
    • 3/5
      Not as satisfying as Ferris's first two books. It was written more obviously as a comic novel like something by Sam Lipsyte and comic novels are things I tend to admire more than enjoy.
    • 4/5
      Conflicted with my rating because I am not interested in the subject matter but entranced by the authors writing skill.
    • 3/5
      Not bad and kept me reading. Paul O’Rourke is a mess. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour focuses on the world, society, religion and baseball. Paul wants to fit in the world but he can’t understand it. Basically Paul avoids having an internet presence and only uses it to check up on the Red Sox until someone makes a website for his dental practice and post about religion. He is pissed and wants to know why this is happening and by who, which he does find out, he is an Ulm. Most of the book focuses on what an Ulm is, his connection, whether or not it is a hoax and just him getting sucked more and more into it.This isn’t the first time he tried to find a place, he dated an employee of his and fell in love with Judaism. He loved the customs, the history and the sense of family, but he’s an atheist. Paul doesn’t understand why someone born into Judaism can be an atheist and a Jew, but not him (become a Jew while being atheist). He’s spending more time corresponding with people posting under his identity being consumed by it and people become concern over the statements his fake online self are saying. He just wants to figure out if there is any truth to what he is being told about the Ulms and himself.

      This book makes you think about religion vs family/tradition while being humorous. For a book about society, religion, doubt, and faith it’s not preachy or favoring one opinion over the other. It is respectful. It’s also not a heavy read, its light and the plot moves along well, but it is still complex. I did feel like there was something missing towards the end, it gets jumbled up. It was going in all kinds of directions and circling around a message that wasn’t fully formed.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed Mr. Ferris's two previous novels; I liked this one, too, but not as much.This is the story of Paul O'Rourke, a dentist who discovers someone is impersonating him on the Internet. Which is ironic, since Paul isn't really a very interesting guy. He has trouble maintaining relationships...partly because he has trouble defining who he is. Now, someone else is attempting to define that....claiming that Paul is a descendant of an ancient group of people called the Ulms, who were enemies of Jews and committed to doubt (like agnostics on steroids). The book is often funny and provides a commentary on the importance of social media in defining one's identity. What really made the book for me was the last few pages, where Paul finally seems to find a sense of himself. It's one of those books that, for me, becomes better after a bit of contemplation.
    • 4/5
      What a book. I read it due to a "Best Book of 2014" list somewhere online. I was not expecting a book about a dentist who loved the Red Sox, and once I figured that out, I never expected to like it as much as I did. A really wonderful style of writing.
    • 2/5
      I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

      To Rise Again at a Decent Hour was just okay for me. I wasn't laughing out loud like other reviewers, perhaps it was the genre that didn't appeal to me. Nonetheless, I found the subject matter interesting, we live in a time where the social media drives our identity and the internet responsible for our thought process (Wikipedia is a credible source, really?). I'm sure this book I'm sure will strike a chord with many readers.

      Paul O'Rourke is the novel's first person narrator. Is he unlikable? For me, yes. He's a bit on the dull side, and I couldn't really relate to him or buy into his character. But was that the point, to come up with a character that was so self-absorbed and uninteresting that becomes a target for identity theft when he really doesn't have much of one? The most interesting part of the story for me was how Paul is so intrigued by himself, or who he is perceived to be. Ferris really does well with this angle.

      The ending left me wanting. Again, why did this man choose Paul to impersonate, he's not even interesting? The book ends rather abruptly even though Paul seems better off for what he has experienced. All-in-all, the book left me flat.
    • 4/5
      This is the first person account of a well to do Dentist, practicing on Park Ave in NYC. He tells us about his inability to connect with the world, his past girlfriends and his obsession with the Boston Red Sox. These beginning chapters are fun descriptions of a man out of sync with the world and good examples of the genius that brought us Then We Came To the End. But as the narrative evolves, the narrator, Paul O'Rourke, is a victim of identity theft. Someone posing as him is posting on Facebook and Twitter and has created a Webpage for the dentist office. As this unfolds Paul finds out that the source is trying to convince him that he is part of a lost group of people called the Ulms, stemming from the Akalites who were the enemies of the Jews. He continues to pursue not only the generator of these statements, but eventually the truth in the assertion -that he is part of this lost tribe whose religion was to doubt the existence of God. There is a lot to admire in the author's creativeness and the disillusion that may be a part of this world that lives on its "me-machine", i.e, cellphone . I loved Ferris' first novel and as I said I admired this work. At times, however, the passages about the religious tracts seemed to slow down what I enjoyed about the novel, one's man's journey to find his place and perhaps happiness in the world.
    • 4/5
      There were many parts of this book which made me laugh out loud. Others parts (the fake history parts) went on too long. Overall, a marvelous book which tackles some very big questions in a very funny way.
    • 1/5
      The opening of my notes on Ferris's "Then We Came to the End":> There are different kinds of superficiality. When a book is said to be “relentlessly superficial,” it may be that it keeps promising depths that it does not deliver. This book is more “dependably superficial,” because we are told, by the book's style and voice, that it will not be plumbing any depths. A reader knows what kind of entertainment it offers. At the same time this is not entirely fluff, because it has a very curious and original narrative voice: the narrator speaks using the first-person plural...Here I'd say the same, except the narrative innovations are different. In "To Rise Again," the plot is driven by a Doppelgaenger, who writes in the main character Paul's voice. Unfortunately this is only a plot device and not a voicing experiment. Some dialogues between Paul and Connie display a more interesting innovation. Connie speaks (she is quoted in direct narration), and then Paul reports to us in indirect narration and subjunctive voice: "I told her, and she'd say..." And then Connie's replies, in direct narration, are composed in such a way that we can deduce what Paul has just said. (p. 23 etc.) This might be Ferris's own invention. It works wonderfully, but it's only used four or five times in the book.I still think Ferris is a superficial writer with an capacity to invent interesting voices. I wonder what would happen if he gave up his other ambitions (to win the Man Booker, to get more endorsements from people like Sarah Jessica Parker, to comment on 21st century American life, to write more sharply than Baker or DFW or Saunders) and concentrated on a novel that did strange things to voice.(Note on this review: I haven't been posting to LibraryThing or Goodreads in the last couple of years, because my reading habits have changed: I am reading and re-reading Musil, Proust, Schmidt, and some others, and I'm working on my own writing and posting notes on writingwithimages.com.)
    • 4/5
      Dr. Paul O'Rourke is a dentist, an atheist, and a Red Sox fan. He also prefers to avoid technology, and that is why it is so surprising when a webpage pops up for his dental practice. It is followed shortly after by a Twitter profile. But Paul has nothing to do with this online presence. In trying to determine who is impersonating him, he comes to question his whole identity. I didn't feel as invested in what happened to Paul as I would have liked, but this book did make me think about religion, identity, and our lives online.
    • 2/5
      I was unable to finish this novel because I found the hero a tiresome misanthrope and the storyline predictable. I also felt cheated because my understanding was this was a humorous and whimsical novel. I appreciate humor. I enjoy whimsy. But I don't like to have to "live" with a protagonist who appreciates little or nothing in life other than his own opinion. And I was getting annoyed with some of the literary acrobatics performed by the author in order, it seemed to me, to be Post-Modern and "with it" in some kind of insider New York way. Ho-hum.Admittedly, the schtick of having an identity created by an anonymous stranger on the Internet rather than having one's identity stolen intrigued me. However, not enough to keep me turning the pages to the bitter end. Besides, the book gave off a faint aroma of being "borrowed" from a previous novel I have read, Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question. Similar protagonists, similar themes. I didn't like "Finkler," but I finished it.. Any possibility of the thrill of the new being found in Ferris' novel is gone. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
    • 4/5
      As confusing a novel of a man's utter failure as has ever been written, Joshua Ferris is still an author of immense wit and insight. Paul O'Rourke, Park Avenue DDS, lives his life for the Boston Red Sox (even during the historic 2011 late season collapse) and for his very sporatic and ultimately unfulfilling love affairs - until a website in his name appears, without his approval or contributions. In the midst of a plot that dissects his vain attempts to become part of the families of his inamoratas, Catholic and Jewish, Paul is told that he is an Ulm, an ancient remnant of the Amalekites, who surrendered in battle to the Israelites and were mostly wiped out.Amongst the Ulm-ness are hilarious tales of dental patients, rabbi-and-priest jokes, and a most fascinating way of writing dialogue:I'd tell her, she'd say, "What is the point of...I'd tell her, she'd say, "Yes, I agree...In other words, the only part of the conversation that the reader sees is the reply. But it still works and is so clever and really amusing!I liked Ferris's first book Then We Came To The End the best, but he is always engaging and enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      Very well written story with elements of absurd on meaning of life and religion. Funny just enough. Excellent depiction of characters that are easily recognizable.
    • 3/5
      The narrator gets old after a while.
    • 2/5
      It started off so well with misgivings about technology and the contradictions of being a smoking dentist and other funny office lyf stuff but then it sorta trailed off...
    • 3/5
      I thought it was going to be, in the words of Wodehouse, "one long scream from start to finish." Certainly the first 100 pages nearly lived up to the Stephen King plug on the back, which said it was almost "the Catch-22 of dentistry." I hugely enjoyed first-person narrator Paul O'Rourke's curmudgeonly interior monologue and his hilarious propensity to find something negative about everything and everyone. Paul's take on technology and the internet, in particular, was hysterically funny. High humor, too, was his take on codependent relationships, for which his terminology was too profane to repeat in a polite book review.However, Paul went on some kind of religious journey, despite being an atheist. These sorts of pilgrimages invariably bore me to death, and I struggled through some very long passages of holy writings from some ethnic religious cult called the Ulms (a bizarre dental patient of Paul's insisted that Paul was an Ulm, then stole Paul's identity and created a web/social media presence for him to spread the Ulmish gospel in Paul's name). About three-fourths of the way through I stopped laughing and began puzzling over what, exactly, was supposed to be happening to Paul and what some random, purportedly also-Ulmish billionaire had to do with it.As with so many humorous novels, it spun out of control just after the middle, and not in a funny way which suggested the author had the narrative well in hand. The ending seemed odd, as in, "Ah, so that's where Paul was headed." The ending wasn't forced, exactly, but it didn't seem to grow sensibly from a denouement. The latter fourth of the book was pretty much a muddle. I think the author was trying to get at something profound about a human need for something akin to a religious tradition or a "people" to belong to without necessarily subscribing to a religion--the Jewish tradition being the best of these, since it is an ethnic tradition. I am not sure what that something was that the author was trying to say, however.
    • 2/5
      Well, I have some good things to say about [To Rise Again at a Decent Hour]. For one thing, it made me feel rather better about my own dental habits. Ferris's Park Avenue dentist Paul O'Rourke is thrown into fits of despondency by his patients' lack of dental hygiene and whatever my own failings (I'm rather dentist phobic, and definitely don't go as often as I ought to) I'm certainly not as bad as some of his patients! And I don't think Paul O'Rourke is as bad as some reviewers would argue: he has 'issues' certainly, he has objectionable qualities, but at the end of the day he seems to genuinely care about his patients. And it did make me laugh. Once. But this is a novel which according to the blurb is 'smart, sad, hilarious and eloquent' and 'funny, thought-provoking, and touching' and I just didn't see it - didn't see it at all. I can't see what it means, what it is all about or what is the point of reading it at all.[To Rise Again at a Decent Hour] then is effectively an interior monologue by its (anti-)hero Paul O'Rourke: a man whose father's suicide when he was a child has clearly affected him deeply. He has struggled with relationships all his life, frequently becoming overly fixated on the families of his girlfriends, when a large close-knit Catholic or Jewish family appeals to his overarching need to belong and seemingly makes up for the short-comings in his own background. But Paul's life becomes more bizarre when a website in the name of his dental practice suddenly appears without his knowledge. And it is not only a website: posts in the name  of P.C. O'Rourke are soon appearing on Facebook, Twitter and numerous other forums. And not only is someone impersonating him, they are impersonating him with some very odd claims indeed involving a lost tribe last heard of being destroyed by the Children of Israel in Exodus. So this was odd. And what it was all about I have no idea.  Not a fun experience.
    • 2/5
      There were parts of the book that were funny and interesting. But also parts that I thought were boring. It was hard getting interested although I did about halfway through. I think this required more concentration than I gave it.
    • 1/5
      Paul O’Rourke is smart, well-off (he has a successful Park Avenue dental practice), under appreciated (especially by women, but also everyone else), reasonably good looking and fit, single (not necessarily by choice), associated with the ludicrously wealthy, willing to indulge in obsessional behaviour whether it be following his favourite sports team or stalking an ex-girlfriend, and (sort of) tortured by an earlier trauma (his father killed himself when Paul was a boy). In short, To Rise Again At A Decent Hour has all of the hallmarks of Chucklit. Inevitably in a Chucklit novel, our protagonist will pursue some quixotic obsession. In most cases it is the love of a woman, or the right woman, or at least a beautiful woman. At any rate, it has to be something that could be everything. Something worthy of his special attention, his effort, and his love. Somewhat unusually here, Paul’s obsession seems to be deism. He flirts with many religions; indeed, they are coincident with his various female obsessions. But at heart he is an atheist. Because as the self-loathing protagonist of a Chucklit novel, if you can’t love yourself it is going to be very hard to love any god formed in your image.The pretension to theistic exploration here is just a ruse. It provides fodder for Paul O’Rourke’s maundering, and sacred cows for his arch-nemesis (who is masquerading as Paul on the Internet) to skewer. And the result is tiresome. Tedious beyond belief. And almost unremittingly dull.So, you’ll be thinking — not recommended. Right!
    • 5/5
      This is a very enjoyable but rather strange book. Ostensibly the comic story of a New York dentist's mid-life crisis, it addresses much deeper questions of religion, family, identity and history, as well as baseball and dentistry.
    • 2/5
      A self absorbed and incredibly annoying dentist from the Upper East Side of Manhattan ruminates about his difficult and unhappy life. This is one of the three books that were chosen for the Booker Prize shortlist that are included in my worst 10 books of 2014.
    • 4/5
      A great book can inspire you to be a better person. This one should at least inspire you to floss more. A very funny meditation on what it is to believe or doubt; win or lose; brush or not brush. The mystery at the plot's centre comes and goes without ever being satisfactorily resolved - but the wit flows more freely than in Ferris's first two novels. A must-read for any Jewish atheists, or sports fans. Or dentists.
    • 3/5
      Dentist Paul O'Rourke, a quirky guy with relationship and spiritual issues has avoided putting his practice on Facebook or other social media, so he is surprised when a Facebook page is established in his name, along with Twitter accounts and emails that he's had nothing to do with. There is much looking back on failed romances and introspection about his life, much of it with black humor. Ultimately, the repetition seemed tedious, and it was difficult to care enough about the narrator to continue.