Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish

We kicked off the Van Alen Book Club series on March 10 with a conversation about Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life, a novel centered on the experiences of Zou Lei, a young immigrant from China living and working in Flushing, and the harsh reality of her life. For many in the group, the novel showed an extraordinary and unfamiliar side of New York City: At times harsh and hard to stomach, but hugely compelling.

“Atticus Lish’s first novel, “Preparation for the Next Life,” is unlike any American fiction I’ve read recently in its intricate comprehension of, and deep feeling for, life at the margins.

This is an intense book with a low, flyspecked center of gravity. It’s about blinkered lives, scummy apartments, dismal food, bad options. At its knotty core, amazingly, is perhaps the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade. It’s one that builds slowly in intensity, like a shaft of sunlight into an anthracite mine.”

-Dwight Garner, The New York Times