From one of America's finest writers: a dramatic and heartbreaking novel about a mother and son's relationship threatened by illness and a father's malice

'A legendary writer entirely on his own account' Observer 'Stunningly good' Guardian Gloria Goltz's intellectual ambitions are derailed when she meets Leonard at college. Self-taught, blue-collar, possessor of an aggressive intelligence, Leonard claims to hold the key to unlocking her potential. After making her pregnant, he disappears. Her son Corey grows up without a father, looking for a male role model ­- and restless, dreaming of a great adventure. Instead, when Corey is fifteen, Gloria is diagnosed with motor neuron disease, and his estranged father - this man of domineering charisma and dubious moral character - returns. Determined to be his mother's hero at any cost, Corey begins shouldering responsibility for her expensive medical care, pushing himself to his physical and emotional limits as her disease progresses. And as Leonard's influence over son and mother grows, Corey must dismantle the myth of his father's genius and confront the evil that lurks beneath it. Atticus Lish won a Pen/Faulkner award for his debut Preparation for the Next Life, a novel 'described as the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade' in The New York Times. His second novel confirms Lish as a beguiling storyteller and a prose stylist of extraordinary emotional reach and beauty.

"A stunning, brilliant novel ... Every word, every encounter, rings true" - Observer

"Extraordinary ... "Make it new" was Ezra Pound's exhortation ... Lish does exactly that ... astonishing ... nothing less than a triumph, worthy of every heroic adjective a critic could throw. It is a reminder, plain and simple, of what fiction is for" - FT

"Impressive ... Charged with breathless momentum ... substantial and beguiling" - Guardian

"This behemoth of a novel packs an emotional punch that will send you reeling...a disturbing and compelling picture of lives in the margins" - Mail on Sunday

"Into the field of post-9/11 literature wades America's latest literary darling, Atticus Lish...Lish was awarded the PEN/Faulkner award for this book. Those who have read it will agree with the decision" - The Times

"Extraordinarily powerful ... Lish's remarkable debut fuses raw realism with narrative poetry to memorable effect" - Sunday Times

"Lish keeps you nothing but rapt by his last-gasp gear change... in years to come he'll be spoken of as a legendary writer entirely on his own account." - Observer

"Magnificent ... one of the best recent novels I have read about work as it exists for millions of people ... attests to a more profound and intimate knowledge of how life functions on the margins" - New Statesman

"Here is a raw first novel with a low center of gravity. Set in Queens, it dilates upon blinkered lives, scummy apartments, dismal food and bad options. At its heart is a love story between a Chinese immigrant and a veteran of the Iraq war. Mr. Lish's narrative is intense, moving and somehow necessary" - The New York Times

"Astonishing, gorgeous ... It is hard to imagine a more daunting task for a novelist than to say something new about 9/11. Preparation for the Next Life is dizzying in its ambition and exhilarating in its triumph" - New York Review of Books

"A stunning debut novel ... Lish's prose is at once raw and disciplined, and every word feels necessary" - Publishers Weekly

"A tour de force of urban naturalism ... a love story that's as bold and urgent as any you'll read this year" - Wall Street Journal

"A significant contribution ... striking ... [Lish] isn't catching a mood but building a world ... we look to long novels for richness, not perfection, for power, not precision, so we should savour Lish's audacity and open heart, his refusal to coddle or console" - Daily Telegraph

"Punches its way, bare-knuckled, through every millennial New York novel centring around middle-class intellectual characters ... kicking typical tales of artsy, east-coast intelligentsia romance into a dumpster. But its real target, sought out with a heat-seeking precision, is far weightier, and that is America itself" - Observer

"What a strange genius, this author, of a novel full of such tenderness and violence. The portrait is heartbreaking" - Harper's

"like an American cousin of Shuggie Bain ... Heavyweight prose and highminded commitment" - Daily Mail

"Stunningly good" - Guardian