Reviewed by Alyssa Mackenzie
An unsettling picture of modern America
In an America gone awry with strange weather, New York lawyer Tim Farnsworth suffers a peculiar affliction: the inability to stop walking. While his wife, Jane, struggles to keep their family together in the face of the unfathomable, Tim alone must battle to survive pitiless surroundings, encounters with hostile strangers, and the unrelenting demands of his own body. These challenges force Tim to ask life’s most pressing questions, which he answers in a final return on foot across country to reunite with his wife and daughter.
Stripped of all defences, and the sense of hope that lies at the very heart of the American dream, Farnsworth is compelled to confront the terrifying reality of what it is to be a human being.
In this story of a man inflicted with an inexplicable compulsion, Joshua Ferris offers an ambitious exposure of modern life and the human condition. This is a modern-day tragedy, which, while occasionally lacking in emotional resonance, is nonetheless an arresting read.
