Preparation For The Next Life, Lish - B

                                               This novel has received rave reviews and wound up on my list because it is set in a community that I once lived and worked in - Flushing, NY.  Northern Queens and the end of the #7 Line were never anything special, but forty years ago it certainly was middle-class.  Today it is dominated by various Asian immigrant groups and is known as Flu-Shing.  I have walked through it, but never sensed the desperation of life that is set forth here. Everyone is hustling everyone else with an almost incomprehensible ruthlessness. It is life lived in primal fear and total poverty. It is a zero-sum game that almost feels like life on the savannah. A woman from Uighur in the US illegally falls in love with an American who has just done three tours in Iraq. She is totally broke and is trying as hard as possible to get ahead of the financial curve by working for less than the minimum wage in food joints/restaurants/markets etc. He is so spaced out-on 5 different prescription meds for his war wounds, depression, nightmares and schizophrenia that he seldom knows what day it is. They inquire at the City Clerk's Office on the procedure to marry. Hope for them recedes when the son of the nightmarish Irish couple he rents the cellar from for $400 per month returns from ten years in jail. Jimmy is a miserable angry shite and you know something bad is going to happen. It does. But, Zou Lei is as tough as nails and embodies every single character trait for which we honor and praise immigrants as such an important part of our history. I, for one, hope that all of those who are as different from us as our ancestors were from mainstream America a century and a half ago continue to come here, work their fannies off and make it in America.  Queens County is the most ethnically and linguistically diverse place in the world. This street-level view of poverty and - I hate to repeat the word - utter desperation is an eye-opener.  It's not for all, but is for those with an affection for NY, the knowledge that our ancestors were once in this boat, and a sympathy for those on the bottom.