In such a world, the trajectory of any one character, however prominent, never escapes being warped by the gravity of another. Even if, as in Preparation for the Next Life, these background figures are no longer alive. Just as marginalization cannot reduce them to zeroes, neither do destruction and disappearance….
At Full Stop, Maxwell Donnewald writes about Atticus Lish’s novel Preparation for the Next Life, using it to explore the push-and-pull relationship between reality and fiction, and reality in fiction.
