What to call this book? It’s a love story, but it’s also a portrait of modern-day New York City and its most-put-upon inhabitants. Lish does for NYC what Cormac McCarthy does for the West: he brings alive its conjoined beauty and danger on the page. "Preparation for the Next Life" is a gritty, utterly realistic portrayal of a Chinese Muslim illegal immigrant (working for pitiful wages at a Chinese restaurant while sleeping on a grungy mattress in a partitioned room) and the man she falls in love with, an Iraq war veteran who suffers from PTSD.
