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The narrator’s journey is a tour through the absurd beliefs that organize ordinary life.

We all live inside stories so pervasive that we mistake them for the world.

Laura Vazquez hears, sees, and feels the world differently from you and me. 

The narrator bathes the reader’s mind in the absurdity of every signifier.

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ Krishnamurti

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ Krishnamurti

“The Forces” by Laura Vazquez is a French novel that will be published in English next year. But it’s not really a novel or even a book: it’s a combination of a musical score and script for a five-part opera about existential psychology. Like “Finnegans Wake,” it is meant to be heard. And watching Ms. Vazquez’s readings of “Les Forces” on YouTube is like watching Gustavo Dudamel conduct Mahler: both Dudamel and Vazquez hear, see, and feel the world differently from you and me.

Ms. Vazquez is a fragile soul who sees through the veil of “normal” to reveal the organized madness of mundane existence more vividly than any Western philosopher. There are parts influenced by Wittgenstein’s aphorisms, and yet, they are sung. Imagine Charli XCX singing “The Tractatus.” This book is going to flabbergast a generation of readers the way “Generation X” and “Infinite Jest” rocked my generation. The diction and descriptions made me laugh and cry alternatively throughout.

For example, on page 2, the young narrator says, “I live in an apartment that is in a building that is in a city that is in a country, and I am not looking for trouble. If you saw me, you wouldn't notice me, because I'm not deformed or smelly and I don't raise my fists in the air while screaming in the streets, I haven’t stabbed anyone, I am polite, I stand up straight. My parents are normal people and they brought me........

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