Description

‘A legendary writer entirely on his own account’ Observer

‘Stunningly good’ Guardian

Gloria Goltz’s intellectual ambitions are derailed when she meets Leonard at college. Self-taught, blue-collar, possessor of an aggressive intelligence, Leonard claims to hold the key to unlocking her potential. After making her pregnant, he disappears. Her son Corey grows up without a father, looking for a male role model – and restless, dreaming of a great adventure.

Instead, when Corey is fifteen, Gloria is diagnosed with motor neuron disease, and his estranged father – this man of domineering charisma and dubious moral character – returns. Determined to be his mother’s hero at any cost, Corey begins shouldering responsibility for her expensive medical care, pushing himself to his physical and emotional limits as her disease progresses. And as Leonard’s influence over son and mother grows, Corey must dismantle the myth of his father’s genius and confront the evil that lurks beneath it.

Atticus Lish won a Pen/Faulkner award for his debut Preparation for the Next Life, a novel ‘described as the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade’ in The New York Times. His second novel confirms Lish as a beguiling storyteller and a prose stylist of extraordinary emotional reach and beauty.

Publisher Review

Praise for Preparation for the Next Life -- : A stunning, brilliant novel ... Every word, every encounter, rings true -- 'Pick of the Week' * Observer * Extraordinary ... "Make it new" was Ezra Pound's exhortation ... Lish does exactly that ... astonishing ... nothing less than a triumph, worthy of every heroic adjective a critic could throw. It is a reminder, plain and simple, of what fiction is for * FT * Impressive ... Charged with breathless momentum ... substantial and beguiling * Guardian * A complex exploration of masculinity, veering from the fierce, destructive aggression of Corey's encounters with his father to the tender, attentive dedication he displays toward his mother. Lish writes with unhurried precision, avoiding sentimentality yet generating enormous emotional resonance -- New Yorker This behemoth of a novel packs an emotional punch that will send you reeling...a disturbing and compelling picture of lives in the margins * Mail on Sunday * Into the field of post-9/11 literature wades America's latest literary darling, Atticus Lish...Lish was awarded the PEN/Faulkner award for this book. Those who have read it will agree with the decision * The Times * Extraordinarily powerful ... Lish's remarkable debut fuses raw realism with narrative poetry to memorable effect * Sunday Times * Devastatingly good. My heart was a different size by the time I finished: swollen from the terrible beating it took, but also, I think, permanently augmented -- Ned Beauman, author of The Teleportation Accident Magnificent ... one of the best recent novels I have read about work as it exists for millions of people ... attests to a more profound and intimate knowledge of how life functions on the margins * New Statesman * Punches its way, bare-knuckled, through every millennial New York novel centring around middle-class intellectual characters ... kicking typical tales of artsy, east-coast intelligentsia romance into a dumpster. But its real target, sought out with a heat-seeking precision, is far weightier, and that is America itself * Observer * Here is a raw first novel with a low center of gravity. Set in Queens, it dilates upon blinkered lives, scummy apartments, dismal food and bad options. At its heart is a love story between a Chinese immigrant and a veteran of the Iraq war. Mr. Lish's narrative is intense, moving and somehow necessary -- Dwight Garner, '2014 Books of the Year' * The New York Times * Astonishing, gorgeous ... It is hard to imagine a more daunting task for a novelist than to say something new about 9/11. Preparation for the Next Life is dizzying in its ambition and exhilarating in its triumph -- Clancy Martin * New York Review of Books * A stunning debut novel ... Lish's prose is at once raw and disciplined, and every word feels necessary * Publishers Weekly * A tour de force of urban naturalism ... a love story that's as bold and urgent as any you'll read this year -- Sam Sacks * Wall Street Journal * A significant contribution ... striking ... [Lish] isn't catching a mood but building a world ... we look to long novels for richness, not perfection, for power, not precision, so we should savour Lish's audacity and open heart, his refusal to coddle or console * Daily Telegraph * Lish's prose is superlucid, propulsive but always beautifully controlled, authoritative yet selfless, wrought with an exactitude that is the toughest but deepest kind of compassion a book can have -- Colin Barrett A remarkable portrait of a sensitive boy forced into a life of hardness and violence . . . a superbly original talent -- Wall Street Journal What a strange genius, this author, of a novel full of such tenderness and violence. The portrait is heartbreaking -- Christian Lorentzen * Harper's *