The War for Gloria

(Hardback, Main)

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Description

Corey Goltz grows up in working-class Boston as the only child of Gloria, whose intellectual ambitions were derailed early. Corey, restless, dreams of a great adventure.

Instead, when he is fifteen, Gloria is diagnosed with ALS and, too late, his estranged father, Leonard - a man of great charisma and deep resentments - reenters the picture. 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 Corey grows, Corey must dismantle the myth of his father's genius and confront the evil that lurks beneath it.

This is a heartbreaking, shocking and beautiful novel. It confirms Lish as one of the greatest storytellers and prose stylists in the English language.

Reviews

'Praise for Preparation for the Next Life' - :

'A stunning, brilliant novel ... Every word, every encounter, rings true' - 'Pick of the Week'

'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

Author Bio

ATTICUS LISH is the author of Preparation for the Next Life, which won the 2015 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2016 Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine.