Preparation for the Next Life

Other. Some works of fiction present characters just like us, so we can be entertained by the human condition as we live it everyday. Other works of fiction present characters from the margins of society, and whose lives are very different from our own. Atticus Lish’s debut novel titled, Preparation for the Next Life, revels in the margins as he draws a portrait of characters most of us would consider as the “other.” Protagonist Zou Lei, an ethnic Uigher Muslim from China, was smuggled into the United States, where she now tries to disappear. Protagonist Brad Skinner is a veteran with PTSD who keeps re-living what happened on his last tour in Iraq. They come together in Queens, the melting pot of the world, and Lish draws us into their isolation and the world in which they and we struggle to survive and hope to thrive. Rating: Four-star (I like it) Click here to purchase Preparation for the Next Life from amazon.com.