Rebecca's Reviews > Preparation for the Next Life

(Nearly 4.5) Like West Side Story, this debut novel (by the son of writer/editor Gordon Lish), is an updated Romeo and Juliet narrative – a tragedy-bound love story with a gritty contemporary setting and a sobering message about racism and the failure of the American dream. Lish’s post-9/11 New York City is less melting pot than Boschian hell, a violent abyss lubricated with the sweat of illegal immigrants. The matter-of-fact style somehow manages to elevate the everyday and urban into an art form. In the most remarkable single chapter, Zou Lei wanders the urban wasteland from night until dawn. There is an echo here of T.S. Eliot or of the ash heaps in The Great Gatsby: a reminder that all human achievement erodes to dust and ashes in the end.

(Full review in August 2015 issue of Third Way magazine.)