Forum

by Josh Wardrip

In an unnamed town, an anonymous narrator scrupulously plans and commits an unspeakable, seemingly random act of mass-casualty violence. With a taut and nonlinear exposition that portrays with devastating precision an enigmatic loner's gradual transition from hedonistic anomie to an increasingly strange and sinister obsession, Josh Wardrip's brilliantly intricate debut novel gleefully dissects the raw existential horror of flophouses, mental hospitals, and everyday life. As a primal howl in the wilderness that doubles as an exquisitely structured puzzle, Forum is a meditation on delusion, interiority, and the sources of evil.

134 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2022

About the author

Josh Wardrip’s fiction has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Gargoyle, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. Forum is his first book. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are drawn to novels that put you in the head of a deranged person, like Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me or Jarrett Kobek's ATTA, then you should check out Forum. The literary style is experimental and favors short, non-linear chapters that play out like stream of thought memories of the novel's subject. As a result, the book rewards multiple readings as you work to integrate a rapidly disintegrating personality. Unlike some novels that focus on the claustrophobia of being inside a villain's mind, Wardrip's Forum feels like a modern take on expressionism filtered through cubism (e.g., Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) that gives the sense of a mind dissolved—a mind that cannot sustain even a basic drive for revenge (cf. Bester's The Stars My Destination, Zhao's Iron Widow). Instead the "proto-agonist" is propelled by a drive just out of reach of consciousness, a motivation that is never clear, toward a goal that is only apparent after it is satisfied.

[Melissa Sedlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes you on a journey into the mind of a man with serious mental illness and violent intentions. The lack of punctuation and short nonlinear chapters help to create a disorganized stream of consciousness that adds to the depth of derangement of the narrator. For those looking for something different and against the grain I would highly recommend this book.

[Jon Gingerich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It’s refreshing to discover an author these days who emphasizes voice, texture, etc. over the same tired plot-driven airport-bookstore reads that crowd out most of today's best-of lists. Fans of experimental fiction with non-linear narratives should check this out.

[bodygreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

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