Preparation for the Next Life

Preparation for the Next Life is a stunning, hard-edged, deeply felt debut. Atticus Lish takes us to places most of us will never see: the mean streets of Queens, inside the American prison system and even into the mind of a psychopath. The writing has a hyper-real, gritty quality that seduces with its engrossing tale of lives lived without a safety net. Absorbed in this book, we might feel a twinge of conscience for taking a voyeuristic turn as a "ghetto tourist" were the writing not permeated to such a degree with empathy.