To Rise Again at a a Decent Hour

Joshua Ferris's dazzling new novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is about the meaning of life, the certainty of death, and the importance of good oral hygiene. There's nothing like a dental chair to remind a man that he's alone in the world.

Paul O'Rourke, 40 year-old slightly curmudgeonly dentist, runs a thriving practice in New York. Yet he is discovering he needs more in his life than a steady income and the perfect mochaccino. But what?

As Paul tries to work out the meaning of life, a Facebook page and Twitter account appear in his name. What's at first an outrageous violation of privacy soon becomes something more frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the man in the flesh. Who is doing this and will it cost Paul his sanity?

Slick, sophisticated and very funny . . . has modern Everyman fighting for his identity in an increasingly impersonal world. Brilliant, funny, stomach-turningly accurate. He has teased ordinary circumstances into something extraordinary, which is exactly what we want our fiction writers to do.

Joshua Ferris was born in Illinois in 1974. He is the author of Then We Came to the End (2007), which was nominated for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and The Unnamed. In 2010 he was selected for the New Yorker's prestigious '20 under 40' list. He lives in upstate New York.