The biographical note to Atticus Lish’s 2015 debut, Preparation for the Next Life, lost no time answering the question: yes, he is the son of “legendary writer and editor” Gordon Lish, whose noted severity with a blue pencil made Raymond Carver a byword for minimalism. Yet Lish Jr’s other credentials were nearly as unique: in place of the usual creative writing degree and magazine credits, he listed past jobs as a removal man, builder, factory worker, security guard and (briefly) a marine. The novel itself tugged against literary trends too: outward facing, without a writer-adjacent protagonist in sight, it told of the thwarted romance between a homeless Iraq veteran and an undocumented Uyghur refugee down and out in post-9/11 New York.
His equally formidable new novel likewise draws power from plunging into lives most writers ignore. Set largely over four years in mid-00s Boston, it follows Corey, who drops out of high school in his late teens to earn money and keep house after his mother, Gloria, is struck at 40 by a degenerative nerve disease. Their plight spares him none of the regular coming-of-age yearnings and the gut-level dread that hangs over the book lies not only in the steady creep of Gloria’s symptoms, but in our dawning sense that Corey is looking in all the worst possible places for help figuring himself out.
