RaveThe Guardian (UK)It is clear from the start that Preparation for the Next Life, the impressive debut novel by Atticus Lish, cannot have a happy ending. Illegal immigrant Zou Lei and Iraq war veteran Brad Skinner, both seeking refuge amid the wreckage of post-9/11 New York, come crashing together with the force of classical tragedy. Charged with breathless momentum, the book propels them towards a destiny as devastating as it is hopeful ... this is not a book driven by plot. Much of its beauty and insight into the ordinary dramas of life occurs in scenes that serve no larger narrative purpose, suggesting instead a journalistic will to record the fine-grained detail of New York’s immigrant neighbourhoods and the realities of exploitation and precariousness in the lives of America’s underclass. In his determination to narrate America from the bottom, Lish seems influenced as much by Dickens as by American modernists such as Ralph Ellison and John Dos Passos ... substantial and beguiling ... Lish’s tough lyricism ultimately works to dissolve the barrier between book and reader, co-opting us into a great, multi-ethnic nomadic clan ... This is, in the end, a profoundly political book.
