The Fork

by A. Parise

Molly and Freeman anticipated, and dealt with, many threats to their fragile Collective of too-old teenagers in the streets of post-apocalyptic Philadelphia. They never thought the most serious threat would be a job offer.

How do you build, and keep, a community, when the world has fallen to pieces? What do you do when outside powers try to rip your consensus apart? How do Quakers, anarchists, and regular folks build a system that lets everyone thrive... and what do they do when outside forces try to break everything? And what do they do when those forces co-opt the driving members of that Collective?

This epic book follows the struggles of a found family of orphaned and abandoned teenagers as they attempt to change the course of Philadelphia’s future from a constant struggle of fighting strongmen to a consensus of cooperative workers building a new order from the rubble of our civilization. It’s a big job, and the threats are many. Can a just world be built?

overdose, miscarriage

476 pages, Paperback

Published July 8, 2020

Reviews

[BookBuds]

A post-apocalyptic story with a unique approach to chronology, involving a vast array of methods to survive off the land and retinker gadgets/machines left in a destroyed Philadelphia. The Fork references divides in land, relationships, and life as this novel illustrates various ways of surviving after and within destruction.

Book Buds interviewed this author: https://youtu.be/tZb8GCajHbo

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[Mary Marcason]

The Fork offers a post-apocalyptic read with a uniquely choreographed chronology that captures both practical methods for surviving off the land and ingenuous hands on engineering for recovering tools and machinery of almost forgotten times. Set in a broken Philadelphia, Freeman and Molly share a collective view of surviving with equality and community. The Fork references various divides in this novel, but also a fork fracturing their relationship and diverging beliefs. This is a creatively written novel with some great instruction should you want to absorb some ideas for how to survive in a destroyed world.

[Langdon Herrick]

I've never read a book quite like The Fork.

It is many things--a tangled memoryscape, a love letter to post-apocalyptic survival in the most practical, mundane, and interesting sense, and a meditation on the repercussions of human progress.

It is simultaneously a deeply felt narrative and one that anchors its characters in a dystopian world more realistic than the genre usually provides.

I read an early copy many years ago and it has remained in the back of my brain, inserting itself into thoughtful moments unbidden, very much like the memories our hero Freeman experiences throughout the novel. There are many forgettable books out there and this is not one of them. For that reason I recommend that everyone take a look at The Fork.

[Andy Hoffner]

Compelling, fascinating & important take on the post-apocalyptic genre
With a unique structure of non-chronological memory recall, The Fork builds thrilling suspense amung tragedies, hardships, love, and incredible (and terrible) accomplishments of engineering. Its interspersed with delightful details about apocalyptic life - farming, foraging, tanning - practical sciences and skills made suddenly invaluable in the apocalypse. It explores many themes, but what stands out is it's timely message about the importance and power of community and kinship when the world around you has fallen to pieces.

[Kate Rapp]

In The Fork, first-time author Alex Parise does an excellent job of describing community building and some of the practical aspects of survival following a devastating event resulting in the collapse of life-as-we-know-it. The main characters are compelling and well developed. The author provides enough tension to not only propel the plot, but also furnish insight into Molly and Freeman's motivations and conflicts. These are people I would want to spend time with and get to know better.
The story line jumps about, but when read as a series of vignettes, a detailed look at life in a post-apocolyptic community emerges. As an aside, I will never look at the streets and neighborhoods of Philadelphia in the same way after reading The Fork. An altogether enjoyable read. I would be interested in a prequel to better understand what led up to the Hemorrhage

[Eva]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. I usually like apocalyptic fiction, but this book was not one of those. I’ll give the author credit for an interesting idea, but the execution was lacking: each “chapter” consisted of two pages, and jumped around in the timeline of the story. Not for me.

[Joey Shepherd]

It’s taken me ages to write this review as I’ve been ruminating on this book for *checks notes* nearly 18 months, hence the 5 stars. Anything that makes you ponder that long on it is a 5*, surely!
At first I’ve was unsure- there were sections on practical survival that I found dull, but then it became apparent that survival mundanity (eg how to make jam) interspersed with the more horrific aspects highlighted both halves. The characters are flawed in realistic ways, and the storytelling in the more action packed sections wonderful. The most intriguing aspect is the chronological order, or lack of. I don’t normally enjoy books like this as I’m a simple creature but this worked, and the author numbered the sections so that if you wish, you *can* read it in chronological order. An interesting option, and one I may go back to! Not your average post-‘event’ dystopia, and well worth a read.

[Remy]

I really loved “The Fork.” This is the kind of post-apocalyptic stuff I want to see more of: the daily life and rebuilding a new kind of society, far enough in the future that we are alien to them but not so far that they are alien to us. The very short length of each section, front and back of one page each, did make this difficult for me, I wish they were longer because it feels hard to commit to any one moment when it is so fleeting, but—that’s the point, isn’t it? Memories are of moments, not chapters. Memories, like this book, are not in order.

I loved the unique structure of “The Fork” so you can read it either as it’s intended or chronologically, but to read it chronologically, you have to commit to destroying the book and living with that choice. Maybe someday I will.

In the meantime, much like Freeman, I’ll go north.

[Kaci Weatherholt]

It was an interesting read and I personally had a hard time getting into it - I hard a hard time keeping up because it seemed to jump around alot. It was a good read after getting past that.