Preparation for the Next Life

This book was chosen mostly on the strength of its many favorable reviews. Geoff had proposed the book, and found it intense and disturbing, but powerful in its examination of two lost and lovable souls caught up in a rough unfeeling part of America, among the urban poor, New York City. Unfortunately the vast majority of the group disliked many aspects of the book, with Mal presenting a new award, the WFBE award with a stooping non-woofing dog as its mascot.

The prose was different from what we've read with any of our other books. Stream of consciousness, thoughts, described as "machine gun fire" relentlessly fast paced, did seem to reflect the fast pace of New York City, as well as the disjointed and hectic lives of our characters. Descriptions of neighborhoods transversed, traffic passing, seedy offices and back hallways of immigrant businesses, gave life and pace to the chaotic nature of the city and the characters’ lives.

The book opens with main character Zou Lei at a detention facility after getting picked up by chance in an ICE raid. The description of the facility, and the treatment of the prisoners, especially the terrorist sympathizer woman, was stark. This was not a place Americans associate with America. Zou Lei was at the complete mercy of the guards, overtly threatened to be compliant. The harsh reality of the powerful having unfettered access to abuse the weak and defenseless was a theme that ran throughout the story. The detention facility was also the first of many examples of American institutions that utterly failed these characters. The institutional failures were Joel’s observation, and became another recurring theme of our discussion.

Once released at the Port Authority, Zou Lei is determined to prevent being caught up in another sweep. At this point we discussed the metaphor of Preparation for the Next Life. Most thought Zou Lei did all the kinds of things one should to prepare her for the next life: work hard, improve, love, persistently seek solutions to great problems (her legal status). The group’s sense on the subject toward Brad Skinner was mixed, many believing that his rudderless drugged existence did nothing for the next life. Geoff defended the slovenly existence by acknowledging the burden of PTSD and lack of family or institutional support. Was the difference between preparation by Zou Lei and Skinner’s inability to prepare (because of the failure of another institution, our American military) intended by Lish?

Soon we get to know Zou Lei and Skinner independently. Where their paths intersect, Zou Lei exercising and Brad wandering aimlessly in and out of buildings, Jeff C felt the intersection of the story lines too contrived. Geoff defended Brad’s door-to-door exploration from the soldier in him, and we knew Zou Lei was committed to staying fit. We agreed that most encounters in life are chance encounters. Soon their lives together begin to take on a semblance of balance and direction; but then we are introduced to Jimmy Murphy. Jimmy is raised in working class poverty, and evolving from the circumstance of his family and his environment, Jimmy ends up in prison, for ten years. Prison is another failed institution that fails so many. Jimmy emerges from prison more evil than innocently misdirected.

Once we meet the Murphy family, the first real interaction between them and Skinner occurs, when he brings the rent while the Murphy family is watching a football game. "Not everyone was quick to say hello. The males didn't talk to people they didn't know". Skinner's lack of social skills and the Murphys' hard demeanor made for an unpredictable awkwardness. Skinner tried to engage the one person with something in common with, the NFL player stepson of Mrs. Murphy, on Brad’s workout routine, but didn't catch the cues that he wasn't part of their world, helping himself to another beer. But the awkwardness screamed literary foreshadowing. Jimmy Murphy, a despicable evil character, becomes Brad's enemy.

Skinner, from Pittsburgh, is American, and he has a 9-millimeter Beretta he’s brought back from Iraq. The gun is Brad’s lifeline, a curious irony, filled with foreshadowing to set the scenes toward the end of the story. He is the American soldier returned home, not unlike Vietnam veterans, Korean veterans, even Civil War veterans.

The mildly bright spots were scarce, but reassuring: Skinner and Zou Lei found Freedom in their meandering walks around the boroughs of New York, but freedoms that most of us take for granted - freedom from danger, freedom from deportation, freedom from nightmares, - never come within the grasp of our characters. Joel found the book profoundly depressing.ans and their predecessors. We expose these youth to intense horrors, train them to follow orders and to kill, skills contrary to the work and social settings of the rest of America, all during their most formative years in the liminal state between youth and adulthood. Our institutions, the military broadly and the VA most egregiously, abandon them when they return home. In Brad’s case, to the basement of Jimmy Murphy’s house.

They also found love, and this was a love story.

Who thought there could be a peaceful conclusion? Without spoiling the denouement, most found the ending disappointing. Geoff found Zou Lei’s final escape to an America we can identify with more closely, hopeful. Overall, the boys in the BLBC found the book too hard to enjoy, but I stand by my selection as ‘one of those books we’d never read on our own', memorable, exposing us to new thoughts and new understanding.