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Articles by Atticus Lish
Preparación para la próxima vida
Aishe (Sebiye Behtiyar), una inmigrante ilegal de origen chino, ha llegado a Nueva York. No tiene documentos y malvive alquilada en una habitación que paga con trabajuchos de poca monta. Se topará en la calle con Skinner (Fred Hechinger), ex soldado que ha ido a parar a la ciudad sin un objetivo claro y que arrastra desequilibrios mentales debido a traumáticas experiencias. Ambos tendrán una relación llena de altibajos.
49 Literary Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Fall
Fall is the perfect time for curling up with a good book—or maybe a good movie. (We’re not monsters.) Even better if you can hit two birds with one stone, of course, and this after all is Literary Hub, so here we present the literary movies and TV shows—adaptations, documentaries, and other book-adjacent fare—we’re most looking forward to this season.
Preparation for the Next Life Reviews
2025-26 Movie Release Calendar Jason Dietz Find a schedule of release dates for every movie coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming throughout 2025 and beyond, updated daily.
Le Monde de la berge fleurie
À Boston, aux États-Unis, un jeune homme se bat pour aider sa mère, atteinte de la maladie de Charcot. Corey Goltz, quinze ans, grandit dans la banlieue ouvrière de Boston avec sa mère, Gloria. Lorsqu’un médecin pose le diagnostic de la maladie de Charcot sur elle, la vie de l’adolescent bascule.
High
Good morning! Right now I’m reading Dead Astronautsby Jeff Vandermeer (sequel to Borne, which I mentioned loving in Issue 16) and Inlandby Téa Obreht. Waiting patiently on my beside to-read table are Trust by Hernan Diaz, The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish, and The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. What are you reading? I’m interested, I mean it, and you can use the public comment feature or reply to this email to tell me. If you enjoy these emails, please forward to your friends.
9 Books That Take Aim at the Myth of the American Hero
Reading Lists Brian O'Hare's "Surrender" confronts American masculinity in stories that refuse to salute outdated or unexamined belief systems My father was a larger-than-life presence. Not only physically (well over 6 feet and two-hundred-fifty pounds), but psychically too. Like Homer’s Odysseus, the man took up a lot of space—and oozed mid-century New York Irish swagger. Other kids’ dads were accountants or sold appliances. There’s nothing wrong with taxes or crockpots, but honestly?
Ian Critchley - The New Bostonians
Atticus Lish had an early introduction to the writing life. His father, Gordon Lish, is an editor famed for his meticulous editing of Raymond Carver’s short stories. As a nine-year-old, Atticus wrote a piece of prose that ended up quoted in family friend Don DeLillo’s novel The Names. Yet thereafter, Lish appeared to do everything possible to avoid becoming a writer.
Adam Mars-Jones · Make ’em bleed: ‘The War for Gloria’ · LRB 27 January 2022
Good health connects us with the world, illness forces us back onto ourselves. When Gloria Goltz, the title character of Atticus Lish’s second novel, The War for Gloria, in her early forties, clever, unfulfilled and the mother of a teenager, is diagnosed with the degenerative illness ALS, her life shrinks.
Writer Atticus Lish on doing what it takes to finish the work
As a writer, do you involve yourself in a literary community at all? Well, I don’t have any writers that I share work with yet. There’s always tomorrow. I haven’t tried that yet. But I can tell you who I’m in touch with. I am in touch with Tara Clancy, who’s the author of the great book, The Clancys of Queens. I just talked with her yesterday on the phone and she’s doing well. She’s in New York. And I’m in touch with a writer named Bud Smith, who is located in New Jersey.
Book review: 'The War for Gloria' a harrowing, clever and moving coming-of-age tale
The War for Gloria By WENDY MIGDAL FOR THE FREE LANCE–STAR Not too many authors are accomplished at all the literary elements— characters, plot, description and theme—but Atticus Lish pulls it off in the “The War for Gloria.” Corey Goltz is an only child of a single mother, Gloria, who is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Corey’s father is an atypical deadbeat dad—never around, employed in a blue-collar job, yet an avid reader who fancies himself a physics professor.
Review | Atticus Lish’s new novel is about manhood, but don’t expect to find any social commentary
Atticus Lish’s second novel, “The War for Gloria,” is a book about men. To say that about a book in 2021 implies certain things. That perhaps it’s a lyrical critique of machismo or a meditation on the sensitive inner lives beneath tough-guy exteriors. Nope. “Meditation” isn’t in Lish’s vocabulary — his prose is too rooted in clear physical detail and plain speech for that. And though he’s interested in what makes men men, he approaches his story bluntly, fistwise.
His Mother Is Terminally Ill. His Father, a Mystery.
Fiction Atticus LishCredit...Ryan Hermens Published Sept. 7, 2021Updated Oct. 4, 2021 THE WAR FOR GLORIA By Atticus Lish There is a polished gloss to so much early-career contemporary American fiction, a sense that behind the authorial talents that created these novels and stories, there is also a well-intentioned production team of editors and creative writing professors and various helpers along the way who have passed on the rules of what can and cannot be done on the page.
By Atticus Lish.
The War for Gloria By Atticus Lish. Sept. 2021. 464p. Knopf, $28 (9781524732325). REVIEW. First published September 1, 2021 (Booklist). Teenager Corey Goltz has it bad enough when his mother Gloria is diagnosed with ALS. A loving and dutiful son, he spends most of his high-school years by her side as her condition declines. Worse, Corey has to deal with the harmful presence of his father, Leonard, in his and Gloria’s lives. Leonard and Gloria are estranged, with a past that Corey does not know much about.
[Review] Cherry by Nico Walker
They start their day in the half-dark. She’s gone to take a shower. He’s picking through the house, looking for a shirt that doesn’t have blood on it. Used hypodermic rigs litter the cupboards, which must be bare of food. The dog has urinated on the floor. A dope boy named Black is expected by with their fix. Without it, she won’t be able to go to school—she teaches a literature class. But dealers have to be paid. He, we learn, has a bank robbery planned for later that morning.
‘Patriot Number One’ Review: Exile on Main Street
Zhuang Liehongcomes from Wukan, a Chinese fishing village about 50 miles from the special economic zone of Shenzhen, an epicenter of the historic transformation that has improved the lives of so many Chinese citizens while leaving others like Zhuang behind.
The First Banquet - Gone - Medium
During the winter, when we arrived, the hay was baled up. We drove in at night and saw the bundles in our headlights and the shadows on the concrete buildings with the corrugated gates pulled down. In the daylight, it stayed gray like Portland. The damp climate sent the cold right through your clothes. Everyone had to stay dressed in sweaters 24 hours a day, even indoors.
Last Night at PEN World Voices: Dystopian Africa
The 2015 PEN World Voices Festival began last night with an opening ceremony titled “The Future Is Now.” Ten prominent global thinkers, mostly writers, took to the stage to answer a traditionally anxiety-ridden query: What will the world look like in 2050, good and bad? Several panelists, including Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Mona Eltahawy, and Richard Flanagan read dystopian short stories written specifically for the event.
9th Ave: Atticus Lish with Daniel Handler
This event will be held at our 1231 9th Ave. location. Atticus Lish will discuss his debut novel, Preparation for the Next Life (Tyrant Books) with Daniel Handler. Praise for Preparation for the Next Life: "Perhaps the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade." - The New York Times "As bold and urgent a love story as you'll read this year." - Wall Street Journal "So much of American fiction has become playful, cynical and evasive.
“If a girl is traveling in the steppe and she se...”
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Kay (Washington, DC)'s review of Preparation for the Next Life
Man, what a devastating book. There's a blurb on the back of my copy that describes it as a "sledgehammer to the American dream." It's not wrong. The basic premise of the book is about two people from very fucked up situations who manage to find each other.
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