A book that punches its way, bare-knuckled, through every millennial New York novel centring around middle-class intellectual characters, Atticus Lish’s PEN/Faulkner award-winning debut chronicles the romance between Zou Lei, an illegal immigrant from north-west China, and Brad Skinner, an Iraq war veteran.
Upon returning from duty, the shrapnel-damaged Skinner, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, hitchhikes to New York, where he hopes to exorcise his demons and remember how to enjoy himself. There he meets Lei, who is just trying to get by (and to avoid prison), and an unsentimentally drawn love affair begins, as they struggle to survive via cockroach-infested hostels and minimum-wage jobs. It’s exactly the kind of book you’d expect from an ex-marine and factory worker whose father, Gordon, edited Raymond Carver: lean, tough, uncompromising, sympathetic to the underdog.
Lish’s style often feels like a combination of 1960s new journalism and rolling Cormac McCarthy narrative. As the story builds, you sense he’s so keen to depict the injustice of his characters’ lives, he neglects to take the time to flesh them out fully. I got a real sense of what both had been through, and of how they talked, without ever quite feeling I knew them.
You might say that Preparations for the Next Life was an anti-Manhattan novel, 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.
Preparation for the Next Life is published by Oneworld (£14.99). Click here to buy it for £11.99
