But, he said, you cannot have these beautiful things if you lead a bad life, if you are sinning, doing what you want. of course you must live properly and obey the law. he pointed at the bilingual Arabic and English sign over the mosque's doorway, which he read aloud for her. It said Preparation for the Next Life.
Sometimes reading a book hurts.
Atticus Lish's highly praised debut novel "Preparation for the Next Life" might just break your heart. It might make you rethink The Patriot Act. It might make you understand the endless cycle of tragedy that many veterans face. It might make you consider the plight of illegal immigrants who only want to work hard and find a way in to the American dream. It might make you ponder what real love means, and sacrifice, and poverty, and PTSD, and prison release, and justice.
I'm still thinking about the edgy story of Zou Lei, an illegal immigrant from Central Asia, who only wants a better life, but finds instead a dirty mattress in a New York tenement building that redefines living in the slums. She meets Skinner who is fresh off of his third, violent tour in Iraq. While she wants to work and make New York City her home and prove that she can make it as an American, he wants to find a good time and forget the lost friends and exploding life in Iraq.
Their story broke my heart.
Skinner isn't a bad guy, but his circumstances made it hard for him to be a good guy. He suffers from PTSD and suffers even more from the neglect of the U.S. Government after he served 3 tours in Iraq. Drinking, drugs (prescription and non-prescription), smoking and pornography cloud his days spent in a small basement apartment in Queens. Zou Lei tells him "Something has shook your mind. It could be some bruise inside the head." Maybe that is why he chooses the terrible place to reside where he's only asking for trouble due to his landlady's ultra violent son, Jimmy who recently was released from prison.
Zou Lei and Skinner fall in love even though she is older than he is, even though she is an illegal immigrant, and even though he is sometimes very mean and rough with her. They bond over an almost spiritual love of hard workouts. She loves to run (which comes in handy for her many times throughout this novel) and he loves to push his body over his edge with weightlifting.
Lish's style is jarring and coarse and at times hard to slog through. Each sentence is densely packed with details. There are no quotation marks for dialogue and everything in this novel is grim, depressing and violent. At times the song "Skid Row" from the musical "Little Shop of Horrors" popped in my head, but even skid row is too happy of a place for Skinner and Zou Lei who can't get a break regardless of how much they try. And they do try to get ahead, but life and circumstances don't always allow them to get where they want to go.
It's a tough read, but I was reminded of Ken Kesey and his rambling "fog" chapters with the Chief in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." There is power in the rambling stream of consciousness writing style of Lish and the book needs the grittiness of the prose to tell the story truthfully.
Life isn't always beautiful, and this book is a harsh reminder of that brutal reality.
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